


Blood, Sweat, I'll break my bones(Till all my scars bleed golden)

by Crescent_Blues



Series: Antichrist Verse [6]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Case Fic, Conspiracy Theories, Fluff and Angst, Graffiti, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra (Marvel), I should've tagged that ages ago but whatever, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Maggia - Freeform, Multi, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, This is becoming a, Trans Peter Parker, Wakanda is so cool guys, Wakandan Technology, because hydra, only a little
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-18 21:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22733692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crescent_Blues/pseuds/Crescent_Blues
Summary: "I'm not Tony Stark," he growls, "and I don't need your help."Miss Potts grabs one of his wrists, slowly, choreographed, and peels open his fingers.Blood runs down his arm in rivulets from crescent moon cuts."Yes," she intones with a terrible finality, "you do."(Peter learns how to cope with grief as things stop getting worse and start getting better)
Relationships: Franklin "Foggy" Nelson & Peter Parker, James "Bucky" Barnes & Peter Parker, Karen Page & Peter Parker, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Wade Wilson, The Defenders & Peter Parker
Series: Antichrist Verse [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1510475
Comments: 309
Kudos: 699





	1. A Crown of Thorns

**Author's Note:**

> Going ahead w/a soft opening to tie up the loose ends and get ready for the new arcs  
> Work title is from Strange by the Score (I have been WAITING TO USE THESE LINES) and title of chapter one is in reference to the man himselfs'(???) crown as he took all of humanities sins upon himself(or something, I haven't read the Bible, but you get the gist)  
> Favorite alt title for the chapter was The Devil You Know

Ned's not sure what happened, and he’s kind of ashamed to say he doesn’t know when exactly he started to notice.

But he does notice, eventually.

Maybe he just finally saw it for what it was, or maybe Peter just got worse at hiding it.

Maybe he stopped trying to hide it.

Ned isn't sure.

Maybe it was Calculus and looking up and seeing nothing but dark in Peter’s eyes, nothing but the broken remains of a pen in his hand and ink on his fingertips.

Maybe it was doing homework at his apartment and seeing a new shrine in Peter’s room, a framed photo and small candles and a pair of cracked red glasses.

Maybe it was AcaDec practice and Flash saying something stupid and Peter clenching his fists so tight that the scabs ripped and blood dripped onto the wood, red and bright and terrifying.

Maybe it was the rosary wound tightly around his wrist.

Because Peter isn't Catholic.

He’s Jewish and… and _witchy_ and there’s really no way to put a label on it, but Ned knows for certain, at the very least, that he isn’t Catholic.

Peter still shows up to school one day with wooden beads and a cross clenched tightly in his fist.

It takes a while for him to place it, to figure out what it is, even though he doesn’t know what happened.

But he does place it.

There’s a fresh grief to Peter now, raw and aching and new.

It’s not like those funerals to Hell’s Kitchen, where Ned and Michelle learned that Peter still had a nice black suit for watching dead people get buried under the ground.

It’s like when Ben died.

Like when he was shot and bled out in an ally, in Peter’s arms, and half the school whispered about how Peter Parker was almost an orphan for the second time in his life.

How he’d watched someone _die._

It’s like that.

Except this time, Ned doesn’t know who it was.

He doesn’t know what happened.

He doesn’t even know _when_ it happened.

All he knows is that someone is dead.

Someone is dead and Peter is hurting and he’d probably rather tear his hair out than tell anybody what’s wrong.

He’d probably rather die himself.

Ned wants to help him.

But it’s like middle school all over again.

It’s like the gunshot wound Ned knows is in Peter’s shoulder.

Peter doesn’t want help.

Not from them.

He never has.

———

Michelle hasn't known Peter as long as Ned has.

Hell, she hasn't known Peter as long as _Eugene_ has.

But that doesn't mean she can't see that something's horribly wrong with him.

Something that's fucking him up left, right and sideways.

It takes her a while to piece together the shrine and the rosary and the keys that don't go to the apartment, but she gets there eventually.

Peter isn't Catholic, she only vaguely recognizes the man smiling with Peter and two other people in the picture, and May very, very quietly tells her and Ned that sometimes Peter just doesn't come home at night.

And on the mornings after those nights, Peter steps back into the apartment with red eyes and cracked knuckles.

One time, she whispers, two fingers on Peter's left hand were broken.

And when May had asked what happened, Peter had almost started crying.

Michelle puts it all together.

Puts together the shrine that's like Ben's and the rosary that Peter wears around his wrist and connects it to the not coming home and broken bones and bruising knuckles.

Someone's fucking dead.

And Peter's grieving.

Wearing the man's rosary, lighting candles by his picture, probably sleeping at his apartment.

She asks May about the man with red glasses that look like they belong two decades behind them.

May puts a fist to her mouth.

She tells Michelle that his name is Matt Murdock.

_Was_ Matt Murdock.

Peter never tells them that Murdock is dead.

He never says anything, never puts on a suit and leaves for a funeral.

But Michelle knows that he's dead, and she tells Ned and May with absolutely certainty that Murdock is a cold, cooling corpse.

After that, after putting the pieces together, Michelle kind of isn't sure what she's supposed to do.

She doesn't do emotions, or comforting.

She's not good at it.

Ned is.

Ned is good at it.

Michelle doesn't comfort people.

She just makes them _un_ comfortable.

She's too blunt and too honest and too caustic.

She's too harsh and abrasive, too _awkward_ to be anything even nearing properly sympathetic.

Michelle had done okay with Ben.

But with Ben, it wasn't just _Peter_ grieving.

It was May, and May and Ben's coworkers, and May and Ben's _friends,_ and Michelle was still technically a child and not expected to try and psychoanalyse her best friend as he worked through his weird grief shit.

There had been two guys at the funeral, ones only Peter seemed to know, that had made May weary, she remembers.

And she remembers a man, that she now realizes is Murdock, and _that's where she knows him from,_ telling May that Peter needed to grieve with someone that he didn't feel he was burdening.

She doesn't think Peter has those people now, and she doesn't think she can be one either.

It's not just the grief though, the mourning and the tears that he just doesn't fucking talk about.

Michelle's kind of picked up on it over the years, but Peter is an angry person.

He's laid back and calm until he's not, sweet and kind until he's not, small and unassuming _until he's not._

Midtown doesn't know, not yet, but she remembers.

_Peter Parker fights like the Devil._

Midtown doesn't know, but with the way things are going, Michelle thinks that soon they might.

Because at the death of Matt Murdock, Peter becomes something that can only be described as carefully contained rage incarnate.

It's actually better than it was, which she thinks should probably be frightening, about and in relation to somebody that she knows could kick ass at the height of five foot nothing, but it's really only concerning.

There's so much anger in Peter's little body.

So much tightly wound and meticulously controlled fury.

Sometimes it seeps out like magma from the earth.

Sometimes it just simmers under the surface like a mirage.

And sometimes it's like Peter just doesn't feel anything at all.

Like he's drained.

Like he's _empty._

Michelle doesn't know what she's supposed to do with all of that.

She gathered her information.

She scouted and sorted and pieced everything together.

She's found the whole puzzle.

But instead of showing her the full picture, it just feels like staring at a hidden image painting.

Michelle wants to help, as surprising as that is.

She wants to help, and knows that Peter doesn't want her to, knows that Ned knows, and has known, since middle school.

But Peter _needs_ help.

She's just not sure how to give it to him.

———

They feel bad for him.

He thinks Jessica might be the most guilty, but that could just as easily be Danny.

They feel bad.

They feel guilty.

Peter doesn't… know what he's supposed to _do with that._

They didn't–

They didn't kill Matt.

He stayed behind.

He let the building fall, so that they could get away.

And when Matt got an idea in his head, it was really hard to stop him.

They didn't kill Matt.

Matt killed Matt.

Matt let Matt die.

He’d heard it.

He’d heard it through the concrete and C-4 like he’d heard the bullet rip through Ben’s chest.

Like how Matt heard his dad get shot.

He’d heard it, the last exhale, the last heartbeat, the last _I’m so sorry,_ before it was smothered and gagged by a rain of glass and fire.

For a moment, Peter hadn’t breathed.

Just watched the metal and rubble and flame, watched it all twist and collapse like broken ribs and steel wool.

And then it hit, like the entire building itself.

Matt hadn’t walked out with them.

He knew that.

Matt wouldn’t be walking away from that.

He knew that too.

Matt was still there, under the rubble and burning steel.

Matt was dead.

Matt was _dead._

At the time, it hadn’t seemed real.

And then Miss Claire had taken his shoulder, and slowly folded him into her arms.

She smelled like blood and that stupid, stupid C-4.

And she’d told him that he was crying.

And he was.

And once he realized it, he wasn’t able to stop.

He sat with Miss Claire the whole way back to the police precinct.

Peter was too big for carrying.

Mr. Luke Cage had carried him anyway when the sobs had wracked his body so hard he could barely breathe.

Miss Claire said he was having a panic attack.

Peter hadn’t cared, and Mr. Luke Cage had handed him off to Foggy.

Foggy held him too, and then so did Karen.

Peter was almost fifteen, and too old for carrying.

He didn’t care.

In that moment, he hadn’t felt fifteen.

He’d felt seven, eleven, thirteen years old, felt too damn young to be grieving so damn much, felt the funerals and the suits and the roses in his soul, in the thorns that had broken the skin and the parts of his suit that were worn from so much wear.

He’d felt like an orphan, losing his family all over again.

May was alive.

He knew that.

But if Ben was gone, if Matt was gone, how was he supposed to be sure she was safe?

How was he supposed to be sure she was off limits?

How was he supposed to be sure that he wouldn’t just keep _grieving?_

They don’t get to have a funeral for Matt.

There’s no way to explain why he was where he was, no way to explain that there’s no body.

No way to explain that Matt Murdock and the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen are dead at the same time.

No way to explain that all Peter had been able to find at the bottom of that pit, after weeks and weeks and _weeks,_ was a pool of blood the size of a person.

Miss Jones had looked nauseous seeing it, but that might’ve been the horrific amount of alcohol she’d downed at the sight of it.

Mr. Luke Cage had sworn and looked away.

Danny had gotten on his knees with incense and prayed in probably one of the only ways that mattered to Matt and his stupid cult/Catholic upbringing.

Peter liked Danny most days, when he wasn’t being unintentionally ignorant.

It was distracting, almost fun, to teach someone how to not be an asshole on accident, how to be considerate and aware of things, and then also how to be an asshole on purpose to the people that deserved it.

Other days, Peter hated Danny.

He hated Mr. Luke Cage.

He hated Miss Jones.

He hated everything they stood for, everything that Matt had been moving on from, everything that had gotten him buried under a skyscraper built on the backs of the dead.

He hated them some days.

And some days, it was easier to deal with the anger, than the pain and grief.

Some days it was easier to just be furious.

Some days it was easier to walk up to a tombstone, stare at the wilted flowers on the surface, and break his fingers punching straight through it.

Some days he hated Mr. Luke Cage and Miss Jones and Danny.

He hated them and their pity and their grief because they hadn’t known Matt as long as he and Foggy and Karen had.

They weren’t losing a vital part of their lives.

He hated Stick and he hated Elektra too.

He hated Stick and his war and he hated Elektra for pulling Matt down and into the undertow, and he hated the both of them for making him think that he was only something worth sacrificing.

He hated what Stick and Elektra had done and did to Matt.

He hated the lasting affections, the parasites and the poisons.

Some days he hated Mr. Luke Cage and Miss Jones and Danny.

Some days he hated Stick and Elektra.

Most days he hated himself.

———

The thing about Spider-man and the Antichrist is that being them is like standing on the opposite sides of the visible light spectrum.

They’re two sides of the coin that makes up his life.

And they’re very, very different.

Spider-man is kind, is lenient, will take the guns from the pettier criminals and tell them to _run_ because _next time he’s leaving them for the police._

The Antichrist won’t leave you with a leg to stand on, won’t hesitate, because he doesn’t go after petty criminals, doesn’t poke around the bumps in the night.

He goes for the blood in the water and follows it like a shark, latching on and leaving teeth.

He brings his catches to the police because if he doesn’t, they aren’t going to know to look in the nooks and crannies for bound and bloody but still breathing bodies.

The Antichrist is always softer for civilians, always smaller and nicer, but no one is under any illusion of just how dangerous he is.

People didn’t have that with Spider-man.

Not until he’d grabbed a bus for the first time and held it.

That’s when people became a lot more wary of Spider-man.

New York doesn’t love him, not really.

But it’s starting to.

And where Peter’s at right now, it means more than it ever used to.

Means more to have people leave out food with notes, means more to know that there’s a fan club with his name on it, means more to look at the buildings of Queens and see steel bars for him to grab onto extended from buildings and widows and scaffolding.

It means more.

But sometimes, when he looks at the red lights of Hell’s Kitchen, at the pit of Midland Circle, at the hole in the grave of a dead woman that should’ve stayed dead, Peter thinks that maybe he's too angry to be a Parker.

Because May is kind.

Ben was kind.

He doesn't really remember his parents, but Ben and May used to say they were kind too.

Kind, kind, kind.

He's seen May hold a grudge, and when she did it was a _grudge,_ but it wasn't for more than a few weeks.

She'd said it wasn't in her nature.

Aunt May forgave and forgot.

Uncle Ben had gotten annoyed a lot at work, disappointed and irritated and _tired_ , but he didn't get angry often.

Not there and not at home.

He didn't have the energy for it.

He'd said it was exhausting, that it was easier to be kind than it was to be furious.

Peter agrees.

Sometimes, it's easier to be kind.

It's better.

It's softer and sweeter, it's a calm in his bones, it's helping people cross the street and returning stolen bikes.

It's good.

It's warm.

It's all the good parts of helping people, of being a hero.

If the Antichrist is Matt and the Murdocks and all their demons, then Spider-man is the Parkers, all their loss and their kindness and their love.

The Devils are an ode to Jack Murdock.

Spider-man is an ode to Ben Parker.

But then the fury starts creeping in.

Magma, swallowing him whole and burning everything to soot and ashes.

Sizzling, boiling over and out the bullet holes, scorching the red spilled all over the ground until all he can smell is copper.

He may have a new suit but there's still a bandana with his name on it, with his blood on it.

There's still cord waiting to be wrapped around his wrists, across his knuckles, up his arms.

There's still horns locked in a box in his closet.

_Once a Devil always a Devil._

When Spider-man isn't enough, when the kindness isn't enough, the fury oozes over and the bandana wraps around his face tight.

His suit is still twisted and scorched and broken, and repairing it is taking longer than he wants, but Melvin can only do some much with what he has to work with.

He’s never heard of a technology that could melt through Kevlar.

Peter hasn’t either.

And with the suit so broken, Melvin has to start almost half of it from scratch.

He doesn’t ask Peter why he wants the suit back now.

Peter is pretty sure he knows why.

He makes the time to stop by at least twice a month.

He doesn’t have a lot to spare, but it’s all he can really do.

It’s all he has.

Melvin never asks.

Peter never tells.

He’s grateful, in a way.

Melvin is one more person that he doesn’t have to explain himself to.

One more person he doesn’t have to dodge the questions of.

Melvin already knows.

And he’s grieving too.

Passing the suit back and forth is easier than speaking though.

Sending recipes and soft fabrics and shiny objects and fidget toys is easier than speaking.

Anything is easier than speaking.

It’s getting to the point, though, where they may just have to move on from trying to make something new for the suit.

They don’t have time for it.

With the Hand gone, and the power vacuum in place, Hell’s Kitchen needs a Devil.

It needs the Antichrist more than New York needs Spider-man.

He doesn’t know how he’s going to make it work.

He hasn’t thought that far ahead.

He just knows that he _has to._

———

"Oh hey! It's the intern! Hey inter– oh buddy when was the last time you _slept?"_

Peter doesn't answer.

He's got three more hours of interning and he's running on a combined four hours of sleep across eight days.

Some guy named Hammerhead was getting uppity and it was slowly ruining Peter's ability to get sleep and have emotions and not be a complete and absolute asshole.

The employees and other interns haven't done _shit_ to deserve him being mad or hostile at them.

They're just doing their jobs, and Peter's just angry and pissed at the world in general, pulled thin and exhausted in too many ways to be healthy.

He hasn't been very good at healthy lately.

"Yikes. That bad?"

Control, Peter.

Control.

We don't snarl at normal people.

We keep the rage and the sorrow contained until we can beat the shit outta gangbangers.

Like reasonable people.

Spider-man had been becoming a lot more violent lately, across all the boroughs.

A lot more back alley and a lot less friendly neighborhood.

Especially in Hell's Kitchen.

And sure, Danny was helping out, but he was no Devil.

With the fall of the Hand it was like every piece of scum was crawling out of the woodwork to make a place for themselves, now that the big scary shadow had been crushed in a storm of fire and steel.

Everyone knew.

Everyone except for the cops, who didn't have a fuckin clue beyond what the Antichrist had told Mahoney years ago and what Knight had seen before she got her _arm_ cut off.

But really, they didn't need to know anything more than that.

Not with them gone.

So all they had was the idea of some horrific power vacuum, quickly rising crime rights, and the shadow a vigilante that walked in and didn't walk out.

A long, burning shadow that Peter wrapped around his shoulders like a blanket of stars, because it was the only other legacy he had.

The only other one he really remembered.

Peter drops his box of files.

It hits the table.

Loudly.

The employee that had been trying to talk to him jumps.

Their name tag says H. Rowe in clean little letters next to a picture of them and, in the corner, an old halloween bat sticker.

He focuses on that.

It’s easier than looking at their face and their concern.

It’s easier than processing more potential _pity._

“Sorry,” Peter apologises. “I haven’t slept in a while. Did you need anything?”

H. Rowe doesn’t say anything for a moment.

“Nah,” they finally say, and Peter listens to their lungs rattle instead of looking at their face. “You just looked real rough there for a second.”

Peter smiles dryly.

“I always look rough,” he says dismissively. “Don’t worry about it.”

H. Rowe tenses, for just a second– _why what did he do what did he say what did they see that he didn’t–_ before relaxing.

“Sure, kid.” They agree easily. “How old are you, anyway? How'd you even get _hired?_ You’re probably like, the youngest person in the building right now, besides the tour groups.”

Peter tries for a high tilt of his head, and it feels so much like something Matt would do that for a second all he can feel is _agony,_ before leaning back down into a gaze at the floor that doesn’t hurt so much.

Right.

_Right, right, right,_ how could he ever _forget._

How could he ever _possibly forget_ that Matt’s _dead._

Except he does.

He keeps forgetting.

He keeps pushing open the window to Matt’s apartment and thinking he’ll be there, keeps curling up on his couch to let the worse injuries heal and thinking Matt will yell at him to at least change clothes, keeps waking up rolled onto the floor in the middle of the night, staring at the ceiling as the billboard paints the world, because there’s supposed to be someone else breathing in the apartment and there isn’t.

Peter keeps forgetting.

He keeps forgetting and thinking everything’s going to be okay.

It’s stupid.

It’s _stupid_ and Peter should know better.

He should know better.

By now he should really fucking know better.

“That would be telling.” Peter intones as seriously as he can past the whirlwind in his chest.

It doesn’t come out as grave as he wants, probably because part of him feels like crying and the other part feels like breaking someone's ribs.

“According to my records, he broke into the building, sent FRIDAY offline for thirty minutes, and tied Tony to a chair before lecturing him for said thirty minutes. He was impressed enough to offer him an internship.”

Fuck.

He doesn't know that voice.

He doesn’t know that voice, not really, but–

She said _my records._

Called Mr. Stark _Tony._

Knew almost _exactly what got him hired._

Peter turns.

Miss Pepper Potts stares back at him evenly, tablet in hand and a bluetooth in her ear.

She looks more put together than anybody he’s ever seen in his life.

Like the kind of person Hogarth _wishes_ she was.

"Walk with me." Miss Potts says, and it's an order that at least has the decency to not sound like one.

Peter looks at his box of files one last time, _doesn’t_ look at H. Rowe, and checks his pockets to make sure he has everything.

Wooden beads rattle in his pocket.

It's safer for them to not be on his wrist when he's working, especially lifting things, but he's still always afraid of losing them.

He can't lose them.

They’re like Ben’s glasses.

He doesn’t need them.

But it’s what he has left, so he wears them.

Peter doesn’t really believe in God, or a plan, or anything right now.

It’s hard to.

It hurts too much.

But he believes that Matt did, that Ben did, and re-wraps the rosary around his wrist and adjusts the glasses he doesn’t need.

Sometimes it’s enough.

Sometimes it’s not.

But if he pretends, it could be, just long enough for him to get through the fog.

_It will get better, because it has to._

“Did you need something Miss Potts?”

Her heels click loudly against the linoleum.

They sound kind of like Karen’s.

She doesn’t look at him when she says, “FRIDAY told me your ribs were broken," and just keeps on walking, her heels click-click- _clicking._

Peter doesn't just keep on walking, and stumbles over his own feet.

"I– what?"

Miss Potts stops.

She turns her head to look at him, one perfect eyebrow raising in confusion.

"Your ribs are broken," she repeats and Peter scrunches up his nose, sliding a hand into where the groove of his bones rests just under his skin.

The left feels fine.

The right– does _not._

Oh.

_Oh._

His ribs _are_ broken.

Peter must do something with his face because Miss _Potts'_ face goes a little slack.

"You didn't know."

He shakes his head.

"I didn't– realize." Peter mumbles.

He's not sure why.

He's not sure how he _missed it._

When did–

When did _broken ribs_ stop registering?

Miss Potts purses her lips.

"You didn't realize you had broken ribs?"

He shakes his head again.

Now that he knows it's there though, he's starting to feel an ache where his binder presses into his skin.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck.

This situation is the _definition_ of fucking up his ribs.

_Fuck._

Miss Potts takes a deep breath and then _sighs,_ before tapping out something on her tablet and starting to move again.

Peter follows her numbly through dozens of corridors that all look the same.

The only difference is the splash pattern of scorch marks across the walls and floors and occasionally the ceiling.

He doesn't ask where they're going.

He doesn't really think he has a say.

Miss Potts has the look in her eyes that May and Foggy get when they want him to take care of himself, so he has a sort of vague idea of what's going on.

He just hopes that she's not going to take him to the medical wing or something.

And then Miss Potts opens a dark wooden door to what is definitely _not_ the medical wing, and gently pushes him in.

It's an office.

A nice office with huge, glass bay view windows and carpeted floor, paintings on the dark colored walls, and a high steel ceiling.

Pete thinks he might've seen it in a picture of Stark Industries once.

There's a desk in the middle of it all, nice and clean and stacked with papers.

It has a little name plate that says _Pepper Potts_ in neat lettering perched on the edge in front of a desktop.

It's _her_ office.

He's _definitely_ seen a picture of it then.

Two chairs sit in front of the steel and glass, and on the far side, there's another door.

They go through that one, and enter a small room.

It has cabinets on the walls and the same carpeted floor as the office, with a table in the middle and an old couch against the wall opposite the door.

There's a coffee machine on the counter, an afghan on the couch, and a white board covered in doodles and what looks like Mr. Stark's hand writing.

Miss Potts pushes him onto the couch and pulls a key out of a pocket in her dress slacks before putting it on the table, and the sound of metal hitting wood is what finally gets him to look up.

"I don't understand."

Miss Potts sets down her tablet and walks over to the coffee machine.

It's a Keurig.

There's a tiny Iron Man sticker on the part that pops open for you to put the Keurig cup in, and a dent in the plastic container that you fill with water.

For all that it's just a Keurig, it looks loved.

Kind of like the one that used to sit in Foggy and M–

Kind of like the one that used to sit in the old office before the Castle Trial.

"This is a break room," Miss Potts explains as the machine whirs to life. "I'm telling you to take a break. Take off your binder. Sleep off the ribs. Have a nap. I have a meeting to get to, so I can't make sure you actually take care of yourself, but it'd prefer it if my employees weren't working with grievous injuries."

She slides a thermos under the dispenser and presses one of the blinking blue buttons.

Miss Potts turns to lean her hip on the counter.

"You don't have to do any of those things, but if you don't, then I'm going to send you home so you can sleep it off there, okay? Tony said you don't like hospitals, and I can understand that, but it's not something we can avoid if you puncture a lung on the premises."

"I'm not going to puncture a lung, Miss Potts." Peter says, and she raises one of her immaculate eyebrows again.

And suddenly, the break room feels too warm, the walls too small, Miss Potts too _close._

Suddenly, everything feels stifling.

Suddenly, the magma seeps up through his skin.

"You didn't know your _ribs_ were _broken."_

"This is one time thing." He argues.

_"One time thing._ When was the last time you _slept?"_ She shoots back.

_"Why_ do you _care?"_ Peter snarls in response, and he doesn't know when he started standing but he is now and his nails are digging into his palms and there are fangs dripping from his mouth, and he wants to _scream_ for all the choirs to hear.

"Because," Miss Potts says, voice too damn level to have _any_ right, "you're acting like Tony unchecked, and the last time I really let Tony go unchecked, it was the Stark Expo, and his blood stream was full of poison."

"I'm not Tony Stark," he growls, "and _I don't need your help."_

Miss Potts grabs one of his wrists, slowly, choreographed, and peels open his fingers.

Blood runs down his arm in rivulets from crescent moon cuts.

"Yes," she intones with a terrible finality, _"you do."_

———

It's dark out when he gets the call, lying on the floor of Foggy's apartment.

Going to Matt's felt too painful.

Going back to Queens felt like drowning in pity.

So he went to Foggy’s, tapped on the window when he arrived, and pretended that he forgot to call ahead and not that he forgot that Foggy couldn’t hear him approach like Matt could.

It somehow feels unsaid anyway.

Peter had been let in, and he wasn’t bleeding or in the suit so he hadn’t been shaken down to treat his wounds and change clothes and toss the bloody ones in the wash.

Instead of picking a piece of furniture like a normal person, Peter had dropped and curled up on the rug.

Foggy hadn’t stopped him.

Had just gently stepped over, given him a pillow, and settled onto the couch above him, legs folded and phone in his hand, solemn and still and silent.

He's been a lot less chatty lately, when he doesn't have to be.

Peter feels guilty going to Foggy, sometimes.

Foggy knew Matt the longest out of all them, has always known Matt the longest and taken things the hardest.

Matt’s abilities had hurt him the most, Matt being the Man in the Mask had hurt him the most, Matt dying _has to be hurting him the most._

He never says anything though.

Peter never says anything back.

It goes unsaid just like everything else these days.

Foggy is mourning, and so is Karen and Peter and Melvin and Miss Claire.

Danny and Miss Jones and Mr. Luke Cage didn’t really know Matt enough to mourn him, but he thinks that of the three of them, it’s Miss Jones and Danny that mourn the could-have-beens.

They had taken it surprisingly hard, for all that it wasn’t very obvious in Miss Jones' case.

Mr. Luke Cage had kind of just.

He’d looked tired.

He’d looked really, really tired.

Captain Rogers tired.

A tired Peter sees in the mirror all the time now.

They're all tired, nowadays.

What does that say about the world?

And then his bracelet lights up blue.

Peter doesn't know how the kimoyo bead works, and he's never asked, but he's had it long enough to know that _blue_ means _hearing something about Bucky._

And that's.

That's something.

It's something.

Peter pushes off the floor and into a sitting position, holding his hand open in front of him.

The light from the kimoyo bead shines across the other ones like glass.

He only has the one, the others all just a plain dark stone.

He doesn't quite remember what they are, but he's pretty sure it's black tourmaline.

Watching the hologram piece together is like watching sand reverse in the tide, T'Challa staring back at him in moments.

Damn it all, but he looks tired too.

Foggy doesn't look up from his phone, but Peter can hear the way his teeth grind together as he clenches his jaw.

"Is this a bad time?"

Peter takes a deep breath.

There's a cut on his jaw from earlier that morning, a bandaid over his nose because Aunt May saw a gash before it had finished healing, and the purpling bruises of someone making the stupid ass decision to try and rob him with a shitty sleeper hold painted across his neck.

He has, admittedly, had a bad day.

"No," he lies smoothly, but T'Challa still makes a face anyway.

_No._

_No faces._

_Stop that shit right there._

"You are sure?"

_"Yes, your Majesty_."

T'Challa raises an eyebrow.

Why does _everyone_ always raise an eyebrow?

_"I'm fine."_ Peter stresses.

T'Challa holds up his hands in surrender.

"Alright, alright. He's been completely cleared for a few weeks now, and I just thought you should know– he is awake."

Peter sits up ramrod straight and almost closes his open palm.

Foggy looks up from his phone and slides down the couch completely to settle next to him, staring intently at the hologram.

Peter had told them all about what had gone down in Germany and Siberia, had told them about Zemo and Bucky and T'Challa, but he guesses that it's one thing to hear about it, and another to see it.

Karen kind of hates him for it because his stories are the kinds of things that could make her as a journalist, but, for obvious reasons, can never be published.

"He's awake?" Peter whispers, throat closing up, and Foggy's hand finds his shoulder. It's the grounding kind of thing he needs right now because if he doesn't have _something,_ he might just break all over again. 

"Really awake?" He continues in a croak. "No more words?"

Peter–

Peter remembered when Bucky had first written down the words.

Had first _remembered_ the words.

Had filled a page with them, again and again and again, before tearing out the paper and burning it to cinders.

Usually, when Bucky filled pages with words, it was HYDRA, over and over and over, and then he would get quiet and hide the book under the floor like it was something shameful, before curling into the beaten armchair with one of Peter's textbooks.

The fact that he'd _burned them_ had sort of been an indicator of how terrifying, whatever they are, _were_ , but when Bucky had finally actually _told_ Peter what they were, it had been… 

It had been an angry day.

An angry, magma kind of day.

The image of T'Challa smiles above his palm, and Peter does his best to focus back on that.

Foggy mock swoons beside him, and Peter cracks what feels like the first real smile since–

Since Matt–

_Since Matt died._

It's not a lot.

But it feels like something important.

"We have had him doing tests and physicals for some time, to make sure that everything was in working order and that he did not relapse," T'Challa answers pleasantly. "Either because of the programming or from going back into cryostasis after being out for so long, but he is recovering remarkably well."

“His arm?”

“Scrapped. Shuri is making him a new one. The old one offended her.”

Peter wrinkles his nose and rocks back.

“I did my best with what I had, okay?” He mutters defensively.

T’Challa blinks rapidly for a moment, and does a confused sort of smile.

“Oh, no, that is not what I meant,” he apologises quickly. “Shuri hates the arm itself. She was very impressed by the modifications and maintenance you performed to keep the arm running, but she hates the thing itself very much.”

It’s… very strange, being apologized to by a king.

Sort of in general, but also because this particular king is the king of _Wakanda._

The most advanced country in the _world._

He settles back into Foggy’s side.

“Are you sure?” He asks, squinting. “I mean, you guys, you live in _Wakanda._ Your tech is miles ahead of us. Oceans.”

“And that arm was made during World War Two,” T’Challa says dryly, “and continued to be used up to the twenty first century. It is fairly advanced for the outside world during that time period, but it is still a miracle that it kept running without heavy updates. I believe we found cell phone parts in it?”

Peter purses his lips and tries to hide under Foggy’s arm.

“I didn’t have a lot on hand,” he mumbles.

“All the more impressive,” T’Challa says gently.

“It’s really not--”

“Take the compliment,” Foggy interrupts. _“Please.”_

“I would rather d--”

Peter chokes.

Snaps his jaw shut.

Looks away and covers his mouth with his hand that doesn’t have the hologram above it.

Foggy looks pained.

Peter _feels_ pained.

He says, “Thank you, your Majesty,” instead.

T’Challa looks at him in concern for a moment before his eyes turn sad.

He seems to get it rather quickly.

His father didn’t die too long ago, did he?

So many people have died lately.

The world just takes and it takes and it takes even when you’ve got nothing left to give.

_The world just keeps on spinning, lovely and cruel._

T’Challa seems to make up his mind about something then, and does something off… screen? Hologram?

Something.

He does _something._

And then his hologram disappears like fine sand.

And then the light rebuilds into something new.

And then Bucky blinks back at him with eyes that are _clear._

Peter stops breathing completely.

There’s braids in his hair and a hole where his arm used to be, something that might be paint smudged on his cheek and a tan to his skin.

He looks… 

Better.

He looks better.

Less dragged down and dogged by a quiet horror.

Less _afraid._

Wakanda’s probably the only place in the world where Bucky doesn’t have to worry about HYDRA or SHIELD or anything else that might try to kill him.

It’s probably the only place _safe._

“маленький паук," Bucky smiles softly, with his slanting of his eyes and the widening of his mouth and brightening of his shoulders.

_Malen'kiy pauk_

_Little spider._

Peter chokes again.

“Hey JB.” He manages to get out past the tightening of his throat. “They treatin’ you right?”

“The kids like to braid my hair, and Shuri only calls me _broken white boy,_ but…” Bucky tilts his head side to side. “‘s nice here.”

“Snice,” Peter croaks. “Snake ice.”

Bucky makes a face.

“I thought it was snail ice.”

“It’s snake now.”

“Steve says it’s snails.”

“Steve is a liar.”

Bucky twists to look at someone out of frame.

“You hear that, Steven?” He asks loudly. “You’re a liar.”

There’s a beat of silence.

Then Bucky bares his teeth in a grin and turns back to look at Peter.

“He has fully accepted these claims, but insists that it’s snails right now.”

He’s never seen Bucky smile so much in one sitting.

“Well he’s wrong,” Peter responds, and has to stop speaking because his voice is cracking and he can hardly breath.

Bucky notices immediately, the bastard.

Foggy does too.

“Hey, hey,” Bucky says gently, “what’s wrong?”

Peter grits his teeth and digs the palm and fingers of his free hand into his eyes.

_“Nothing,”_ he croaks, “I’m _fine,_ I just…”

He hears Bucky sigh through his nose, and then Foggy is moving, leaving the room and digging around in his closet from the sound of it.

Matt’s rosary rattles on his wrist.

“Doll, you ain’t _‘fine’._ ” Bucky says, his one hand making quotation marks. “You’re cryin’.”

Peter grits his teeth and pretends he doesn’t hear one crack.

“‘m fine.” He hisses. “I’m fine.”

Foggy drops a blanket on him.

He’s wearing a hoodie he wasn’t before.

They both have _Columbia_ and lions on them.

He sniffles and feels so pathetic it floods away all the angry.

When Foggy settles back down next to him, he wraps the blanket over his shoulders and drapes it over his extended arm.

He takes a deep breath and it rattles so hard it feels like he never got his powers, like the asthma’s still weighing down his lungs like lead and bricks and bullets.

“I–" He covers his mouth with his hand again.

Takes to steady himself in the raging storm.

“Matt… died.” Peter says in a strangled whisper and it’s… 

It’s the first time he’s said it out loud.

The first time he’s made it… real.

Matt’s not coming back.

_Matt’s not coming back._

Bucky’s face _falls._

“Kid… what happened?”

Peter sucks in another breath.

“Building. Stayed behind and it… fell.”

Bucky doesn’t do anything except tilt his head.

Peter’s hand splays all over his face, and his elbow digs into his thigh near painfully.

“It’s been almost two months.” He whispers into the lines of his skin.

Bucky’s eyebrows draw together and just looks so damn _sorry._

It only feels slightly less terrible than the looks he gets from everyone else.

“What can I do, hon?” He says into the following silence instead of _I’m so sorry_ or _Are you okay._

Bucky knows he’s not okay.

He knows he doesn’t want to hear any sorrys.

He knows Peter pretty well by now, almost three, maybe four years old knowledge rattling around his skull.

He knows how much he hates pity.

Peter closes his eyes.

“Can you bring back the dead?” He asks mirthlessly, and almost chokes on the air that passes through his lungs.

Foggy goes still, and then the hand on his shoulder turns into an arm around them, and he squeezes.

The light playing against his eyelids shifts before settling again, and he thinks that Bucky might’ve dragged a hand through his hair, or maybe looked away.

“If I could doll, they’d have a lot more folks like me and Steve to deal with.” He answers sadly, and Peter hazards a guess that he might be trying for a smile said with only his crows feet and eyes. “The whole squadron of Howling Commandos.”

“The world can’t handle that,” Peter says back, all tremor and shake.

“Sure would be fun though.” Bucky mutters wistfully.

_He’s the only one left, and I’m still here,_ Captain Rogers pleads, voice raw and agonizing.

“Sure would be fun,” he repeats, and he can’t tell if his eyes are hot from tears or the pressure of his hand.

He’s not sure which is worse.

“Hey, hey,” Bucky says quickly. “Don’t cry, kid, don’t cry. I’m– Peter. Peter, look at me.”

He tilts his head back towards the hologram.

If he opens his eyes he doesn’t–

He doesn’t know what would happen.

“Good ‘nough. Hey, y’know what? “ Bucky asks softly. “I’ll be home soon. I’ll be there. Promise.”

_Promise,_ echoes the soft voice of a dead man.

“Bucky, you’re a war criminal,” he whispers sadly past the snake coiled around his throat. “And everyone knows your face now.”

“I know, kid. The king has– he has this plan,” Bucky stutters. “I’m gonna… I’m gonna go on trial. And we’re gonna get my name cleared.”

Peter doesn’t breathe for a moment, eyes opening.

He–

_Trial?_

“You– you’re gonna go to _court?”_ Peter whispers, and he can’t quite believe his words, that he said them and they’re real.

Bucky looks uncomfortable, hand over his mouth.

“Yep. Gonna… go on trial. For war crimes.” He answers, voice faltering and going ever quieter.  
“It’s not your fault, Bucky,” Peter warbles out. “You didn’t have a choice.”

Bucky dips his head in a jagged nod.

“I know. I know. ’s just…” he grows quiet, and his eyes look far away. “No one’s gonna believe that. Not really.” 

“But T’Challa and the princess–"  
“It’s good evidence that I was programmed, yeah.” Bucky interrupts stiffly, carefully. “But there’s no way for them to confirm how… aware I was or wasn’t while I was– while I was the Winter Soldier.”

Peter grits his teeth.

“Guess you’re just gonna need a good lawyer then.” He says cautiously.

Bucky snorts. “You know any miracle workers?”

Foggy tenses, and then sighs, great and gusty and loud.

“I’m such an idiot,” he mutters to the couch cushions.

Peter squeezes him with his free arm, and hears one of the bones in his back pop.

“Ow.”

“I know a guy,” Peter answers brightly, and it feels like the first good thing to happen since Midland Circle.

“One that can handle a case like this?” Bucky asks wearily, disbelieving.

Peter smiles with all his teeth, and he’s not very sure that it’s nice.

“Definitely.”


	2. The Second Coming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I ain’t a people, Officer. I’m a Devil. Did you miss the horns?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter went through like three titles my god

Ned ends up sort of meeting Foggy for the first time when he can’t find Peter and calls the number(that isn’t scratched out) listed  _ emergency contact  _ in Peter and May’s handwriting on an old sticky note stuck to the Parker’s fridge.

“Hello?” A voice says on the other end of the line, and it sounds kind of rough, like the person had been sleeping.

It’s the middle of the afternoon.

Maybe the voice had been crying.

“Hi?” Ned greets tentatively on speaker, and tries to pretend that the call isn’t as awkward as it feels. “I’m Ned, Peter’s friend? Your number is on his fridge and he hasn’t been at school all day and May doesn’t know where he is either?”

The person on the other end… sighs.

And they sound… really, really tired.

Kind of like Peter.

Like they’ve got the weight of the world on their shoulders too, got the weight of a years old murder and a robbery gone wrong and twisted, faded scar pressing down on their neck.

“I know where he is,” the person says, and there’s the sound of papers rustling and something snapping shut. Maybe a briefcase? “Like, within a couple mile radius. He had a bad night and– anyway, he showed up at my apartment this morning. I gave him some breakfast before I left and we went down the block before splitting up.”

A bad night.

Like… nightmares, bad?

Or, the thing that got Peter shot, bad?

The thing that got Mr. Murdock  _ dead,  _ bad?

“Where?” Ned asks instead of all those other questions.

“Hell’s Kitchen.” They answer tiredly, and something in Ned's heart constricts. “He’s either still with K, went back to the apartment, or at Fogwell’s hitting a punching bag. He could’ve gone and done something stupid, but he looked really tired this morning. I don’t really know right now.”

“Something stupid?”

“Pete’s angry.” They tell him honestly. “He’s really angry and it still feels raw. He’s very good at compartmentalizing, but it makes him a time bomb right now. Something might set him off, and he might do something without really thinking it through. Like get in a fight. Or vandalise mob property. Or get arrested again.”

_ "Arrested??"  _ He croaks.  _ "Again??" _

"It was before Ben died." They add distractedly, and there's the sound of a door closing. "Kid's been doing a lot better this past week, but he's still. You know. Pretty messed up. Rome wasn’t built in a day, yadah yadah.”

Ned looks up from where he was staring at the wall.

Michelle gives him a very sarcastic thumbs up.

He mugs at her.

“What happened this week?” Ned asks cautiously.

He doesn’t think that they’ll actually tell him, but maybe–

“I’m afraid that’s confidential as of this moment.” They answer very officially.

Ned’s shoulders drop.

Drat.

“Oh.”

The line is silent for a moment.

“It’s nothing on you kid,” they say apologetically. “It’s just part of the job. Pete only knows because he was there when it went down.”

“How come?”

“He used to intern for me. Hold on for a second.” Then there’s some sort of– dull crackle? Like the receiver was being covered, or a strong wind was blowing. He hears a muffled call of  _ “Jessica?”  _ and then another voice gruffly respond  _ “Nelson?”,  _ and they say  _ “I need to go get Peter.” _

The other voice– Jessica– says something Ned doesn’t catch and they– Nelson– huff.

_ “Don’t tell Jerry. She’s pissed about the new case I took. The one with– yeah, that one.” _

He can’t make out the words, but Jessica says something to Nelson, and they sigh.

_ “I owe you.” _

Then there’s another dull crackle as the receiver is uncovered, and Nelson’s voice comes through clearly again.

“Sorry about that.” They apologise. “I’m on my way to get him now. I’ll keep you updated if he’s done anything particularly headache-inducing.”

“Headache-inducing?”

“It’s his specialty. He learned his bad habits from M– from a friend of mine.” They stumble and correct. “It’s as exhausting as it sounds.”

Ned trades a glance with Michelle.

_ M–? _

_ Bad habits? _

_ A friend of mine? _

“We can come to you, if that’s easier?”

There’s silence across the line for almost half a minute.

Then Nelson says, “No, no. Don't worry about it. I'll bring him to you."

And then they hang up.

Ned stares at the phone.

Michelle stares at the phone.

The phone is sufficiently stared at.

“You think that was  _ Foggy _ Nelson?” Michelle asks suspiciously.

Ned makes a face at the offending device.

“Yes? I wanna say yes.”

Michelle nods and then–

Pulls out a notebook to write something down.

It looks beaten and worn, and, come to think of it, he’s seen it before.

Because Michelle’s had it since middle school.

“Is that– is that a conspiracy journal about Peter? Michelle is that– do you have  _ an entire journal  _ dedicated to Peter’s weird shit?”

She squints up at him like he’s an idiot.

“Duh? Peter’s fucking  _ weird?  _ And I don’t have time to remember all of the bullshit that happens around him? You think I only have  _ one?” _

“Like the Castle thing?”

“Nedthaniel. Please. As if we could forget about the Castle thing.” Michelle says.

“Yeah okay, no, that’s fair.” Ned admits.

Then he leans forward a little bit further, and Michelle flattens the journal on the couch arm between them.

“If we assume that this guy is Foggy Nelson, then that means he knew Matt Murdock,” Michelle says, tapping the page. It’s mostly empty but for a few scant notes and the name FOGGY(?) NELSON written at the top, with a red arrow going across the pages to the name MATT MURDOCK(deceased), also with few notes.

Some of the ink looks older than others, or is in different colors, but the ink that looks the freshest is two phone numbers and the words ‘emergency contact’.

Ned never realized how much Peter avoided mentioning details Nelson and Murdock until now, but it's still not less than a guy he pretty much only called ‘JB’ and another one called ‘Clint’.

JB was a ghost, but Clint at least they knew existed from Peter yelling about the vines he sent him and the weird stuff he would screenshot him saying and send to the group chat.

“And if he knew Matt Murdock,” Michelle continues, “then he’s probably in the know on what happened. He avoided saying Murdock’s name completely, like it hurt him or some shit. Like how Peter and May couldn’t talk about Ben right after he died without getting all fucked up about it.”

Ned tilts his head in a nod.

“That seems pretty reasonable.”

Michelle steeples her fingers.

“Peter also went to him instead of May, which points even further to him knowing, but also means that Peter actively trusts him.” She states. “Him and ‘K’, who is probably Karen Page, the reporter.”

“Also seems pretty reasonable.”

“So, what we’ve got is two people that Peter trusts, that probably know what happened to Murdock, and that we’ve never actually met before outside of Ben’s funeral, but know the Parkers well enough to be listed as emergency contacts for Peter. Enough that May recognized Murdock's glasses.” Michelle says, and then points down at the page for Foggy Nelson. 

Ned hums in agreement. “Sounds about right.”

“And this guy, he probably gives a shit about Peter’s health, about him not bottling up all his bullshit, as is his way.”

“Yes?”

Michelle looks up with him, and Ned wonders how she can make her gaze feel so heavy.

“You know what we have to do, right?”

He hesitantly shakes his head no, and Michelle’s face turns grim.

“We need to get Foggy Nelson to tell us what he knows.”

———

In the end, Foggy Nelson doesn't have a lot to say, dropping Peter off and immediately leaving, as elusive as ever.

It ruins her dramatic line, but not every one liner works out, unfortunately .

Back to the enigma of Foggy Nelson.

Michelle wonders if Peter knows how much he unconsciously sensors himself, almost never mentioning dates or times or places, never mentioning habits or schedules or patterns.

He's careful with his wording, like he's speaking as though a thousand unwanted eyes are watching.

Maybe they are.

How would she know.

This is Peter they're talking about.

Him and Ned, they're probably her best friends, her only friends, really, and she knows a lot about Peter, but also, at the same time,  _ absolutely jack shit _ about some of the finer details of his life.

For fucking example, the gunshot scar in his shoulder.

For other fucking example, the  _ very  _ strong painkillers that she'd accidentally found behind the pipes under the sink.

May isn't prone to substance abuse.

She's never once seen Peter even  _ mildly  _ floaty.

Which means they're probably being used  _ as intended  _ for shit that  _ really fucking hurts. _

Not to mention the ever-shifting bruises on Peter's knuckles or the subtle shine of meticulously blended concealer on his face.

And! Not counting the Stark Industries internship he got out-of-fucking-nowhere!

The  _ fuck  _ is up with  _ that? _

There's–

So many fucking things she doesn't know about Peter.

So many things.

It's part of what makes him so interesting.

Like a cold case.

His appearance belies the mystery.

And Ned, she kind of gets that vibe with him sometimes too, when he stops being goofy and starts being serious, when he looks at her or Peter like he'd do anything for them, when she'd offhandedly mentioned she wanted a look at an old cold case but the police hadn't released all the information, and he'd dropped a folder of printer paper on her desk the next day with the aforementioned details inside.

Full of secrets, her boys are.

But that’s not really the point.

The point is, is that after Peter gets dropped back at the apartment and Nelson swans right back off to whatever magical lawyer land he lives in, he  _ smiles  _ at the closing door.

The point is, Michelle hasn’t seen Peter smile in  _ months. _

It does bad things to her heart.

She thinks Ned is having fellow heart palpitations.

“Are you guys dying?” Peter asks them very carefully, but the word  _ dying _ cracks, there’s a new bruise on his jaw that wasn’t there yesterday, and she can the ugly lines of  _ something  _ in the crook of his elbows when his sleeves slip back too far.

“Nope,” Michelle says easily, popping the p, “Just haven’t seen you do the human ritual of bearing your teeth in happiness for a hot minute.”

Ned mugs at her.

“Human ritual of bearing your teeth in happiness.” He repeats slowly.

“I said what I said and I know what I said.”

“What?”

The brightness on Peter’s face dims, and it feels like the whole world goes just a little bit more gray.

From the sloping of Ned’s shoulders, he can see it too.

“Why couldn’t you’ve just said  _ smile?  _ Like a  _ normal person?”  _ Ned quickly asks, and Michelle thinks that he’s getting very good at pretending that nothing’s wrong.

“One: Smile is boring,” she lists dryly. “Two: I am not a normal person.”

“Yeah, I could tell, because you said  _ human ritual of–” _

Someone laughs.

It’s not very loud, and she almost doesn’t catch it, but there’s definitely a quiet peal of  _ something,  _ and before Michelle knows what she's doing, she’s turned her head to look and Peter is–

He’s got a hand over his mouth, eyes squinting, and there’s this tiny little snort as he chokes on a laugh.

On a  _ laugh. _

_ ‘Oh my god are  _ you _ dying?’  _ She almost asks, before stopping herself and biting her tongue.

And then instead she says, “Cat got your tongue, Leeds?”

Ned just keeps looking at Peter for one long moment, and she thinks that maybe she can see all of the worry and the anxiety and the hurt that’s built up in him in that moment.

Because while Peter’s always lied to Michelle, he used to tell Ned everything.

And Peter now, getting him to tell a full truth is like pulling teeth.

Getting him to tell them something that isn’t a  _ lie  _ is ganging up on him in his own home and pushing him to tell them secrets that they really, in the end, hadn’t wanted to know.

She could see it then, in that nebulous space, how much Peter hated lying for all that he was almost nauseatingly good at.

It probably hurt a lot, lying all the time.

It probably hurt Ned hearing those lies more than it could ever hurt her.

Sticks and stones may break their bones, but his words hurt more than anything.

Then Ned’s face goes soft before he turns back to her and says, “I’m not repeating all of that again. It’s not worth it.”

Michelle pretends she doesn’t see the curl of Peter shoulders as he leans against the wall, pretends she doesn’t hear the tiny croak of laughter, pretends she doesn’t feel the room get brighter as Peter  _ smiles again,  _ for the second time she’s seen in weeks and weeks and weeks.

Michelle pretends that Peter being something almost happy after carrying a cloud of dark for ages isn’t a relief.

Michelle pretends.

And she keeps on arguing with Ned.

———

He hadn’t realized how much Manhattan missed him until he leapt over a rooftop in the brighter part of Chinatown, right past FEAST, horns and kevlar and bared teeth, and a group of girls his age had cheered loud enough to draw the attention of the whole street, and then they’d all started cheering too.

It had felt–

It had felt so  _ good. _

Because  _ people still loved him. _

People still knew him and trusted him and weren’t  _ afraid  _ of him, not anymore than they should be.

People still knew that the Antichrist would do anything for them.

And that, really, was the heart of it.

Peter only wanted to help people.

He didn't care if they didn't like him.

It just… really made everything easier when they did.

He rolled with the impact as he hit the next roof, and kept running.

Half of tonight was going to be digging up shit on Hammerhead.

The other half was making sure people saw him and knew he was alive.

That he was there, that he was  _ back. _

That there was someone waiting to help them that they actually  _ trusted. _

Rebuilding all of his relationships was one of the only things about Spider-man that he regretted.

And now, as the Antichrist and after being gone for so long, he was going to have to do that  _ again. _

Networking sucks.

So does getting reliable contacts.

He’s already found and spooked Davis, so that’s Brooklyn covered.

Peter heard something about a new police captain in Queens though, something Stacy, so he might have to check that out at some point.

Queens can only take so many crooked cops, and a captain that was taking money could fuck things up even more.

Next on his list of spooking though is Watanabe and Mahoney.

Chinatown and Hell’s Kitchen.

He could probably trust Knight in Harlem, too, once she finished getting back on her feet.

Everything came down to trust now-a-days.

If he showed up with like, Captain Rogers as endorsement, would cops stop shooting at him?

He doesn’t think cops would shoot Captain Rogers at least.

First though, spooking.

Watanabe still takes her smokes on the roof, thankfully, but she’s got a small audience of two for whatever it is she’s talking about.

Knowing her, probably strategy about a drug bust.

She took her job pretty seriously.

Might be the whole  _ ex army thing  _ she’s got going on.

If Peter’s being honest, he’s not entirely sure how the whole thing is going to go.

Watanabe never knew the Antichrist.

Just Spider-man.

He hasn’t got a damn clue if she’s gonna be willing to trust him.

Then Peter brushes the thought away and touches down on top of the police precinct, feet first with a loud rattle of the AC unit for flair.

Audience members One and Two whirl away from Watanabe and she’s already got a gun drawn by the time he’s holding his hands up in surrender.

"Holy shit is that– that's the Prince of Hell's Kitchen!" One wheezes. “Holy shit. Holy shit, Yuri put your gun  _ down.” _

Two takes a step forward, between him and Watanabe, and Peter feels kind of fuzzy in his heart of hearts.

From his new angle, he can see their badges.

Officers Thomas and Zarei, respectively.

Thomas puts a hand to his chest, leaning against the roof and away.

Zarei has both eyes on Watanabe as she quickly holsters her gun.

Watanabe stares at him, as calculating and assessing as Mr. Castle and Mr. Wilson ever were.

Once the firearm is gone, Peter lets his shoulders smooth out a bit, and Zarei looks towards him.

"Jesus kid.” He breathes. “Do you  _ want  _ to get shot? Where did you  _ go? _ What are you  _ doing _ here?"

Peter shrugs, languid and fluid.

His burns are starting to itch.

"Someone was hunting Devils.” He answers with faux carelessness. “And I decided to stop caring."

_ “Hunting?”  _ Thomas hisses from the ledge.

“You can’t–” Watanabe purses her lips. “You can’t be serious. You don’t hunt people. That’s– New York is a hellhole half the time, but not that much.”

“I ain’t a people, Officer. I’m a Devil. Did you miss the horns?” He asks, tapping his forehead above the eyes they can’t see. “And really, we have child trafficking, synthetic heroin, superpowered humans. Do you really think it stopped there?”

Watanabe doesn’t answer.

He bares his teeth in what might be a smile if it wasn’t so sharp.

“Thought so.” Peter croons, and then straightens out from his lean, loosening his clawed grip from the buckled metal.

He’d been almost parallel to the AC unit.

Mahoney always hated when he did that.

So he always made a _ point  _ to do it.

“Anyway,” he continues in a singsong, “I’m just boppin’ ‘round, lettin’ everyone know I ain’t dead in a ditch, canvasing the island, trackin’ down the maggia, you know the drill.”

Watanabe straightens at that, like a dog being offered a bone.

_ Yes. _

He hears Thomas mutter  _ oh no,  _ as Watanabe goes “Maggia?”

“Aaand, she’s gone,” Zarei says dryly.

Peter hums a yes and sways on his perch.

“Some guy callin’ ‘imself  _ Hammerhead  _ is gettin’ real uppity, doin’ drugs and weapons and people and shit. Real jack of all shitty trades.” He says, and Watanabe takes a step closer.

Hook, line and sinker.

Watanabe firmly in camp Red Suits.

“You’re sure?” She asks quickly, almost harshly. “Absolutely sure?  _ Hammerhead?” _

“I think I’m gonna remember the name of the guy that took a  _ bullet  _ to the  _ skull  _ cause he’s got a  _ metal plate in it.”  _ Peter says incredulously.

Watanabe points an accusing finger at Zarei.

Zarei scowls.

“I told you–”

“Was I supposed to just  _ believe _ that–”

“Luke Cage’s done it!”

“Yeah but that stuff is on video, and you had a concussion.”

“So?”

Peter looks to Thomas.

Thomas makes a face and cups a hand to the side of his mouth.

“Yuri saw a guy take a bullet to the skull, and underneath the blood was metal, but Hossein didn’t believe her.” He whispers.

Peter shrugs.

“ It be like that .” He responds sagely, and Thomas puts hand to his chest, nodding solemnly.

Bless him.

Peter was so lucky he managed to get like, the only nice cops in this precinct all at once.

That might be too harsh, actually.

Things had gotten more cleaned up since Fisk.

But also.

Cops have definitely shot him so nevermind,  fuck cops .

Where are you real life Commissioner Gordon, to clean up this hell city’s police department?

“What else do you know about Hammerhead?” Watanabe suddenly asks, and Peter swaps his attention back to her.

Zarei has moved to stand closer to Thomas.

“Not much,” he admits. “I’ve only seen ‘im the once, but he’s a pretty busy guy. Got lots of shit goin’ on all at the same time. Like I said, weapons, drugs, people. Maybe money, too. Probably hits. I ain’t sure.”

“But will you tell us if you find more?”

“If you tell me what you find out, too.” Peter hedges. “And only if it’s the truth. I don’t got time for backstabbing and false info. Deal’s gotta be equal on both sides or no dice.”

“Deal.”

He smiles.

“Deal? No further terms and conditions?”

“Holy shit, he actually does talk like that.” Thomas says to Zarei. “I thought the deal thing was a joke from the ninth.”

Zarei snorts. “People thought he was a joke too until they actually saw him. Assume nothing with superfolks, Thomas. It’s better for your health.”

_ “Deal.”  _ Watanabe stresses.

Peter holds out a hand, and distantly, Thomas’s heart rate skyrockets.

_ “ _ _ Oh my god he shakes hands when he makes deals. _ _ ” _

Watanabe takes it and shakes, once, before letting go.

Peter backflips off the AC unit, just because he can.

“It’s been lovely dealing with you,” he says to Watanabe as he inches towards the edge of the roof, “ but I’ve got more people to spook and more guns to snap in half. ”

And something in Watanabe’s face suddenly  _ changes,  _ and she takes two steps forward.

Peter doesn’t want to wait to find out what it is, and is hauling himself over the edge when–

“It’s you, isn’t it? Spidey?” She asks lowly, quietly, just enough so that Thomas and Zarei won’t hear but he  _ will. _

Peter stops, just a hair.

He dips his head to the ground.

“And if it is?”

“What’re you doing?” Watanabe hisses, and she sounds weirdly furious. “Putting on horns and beating the shit out of people is like  _ asking _ for a target–”

Oh.

She  _ cares,  _ holy shit.

That’s insane.

“It’s always been me.” He hisses back, and Watanabe pulls up short. “ I’ve always worn the horns. I just covered them with webs and pretended I was something better because it was easier than doing nothing.

“ I’ve always been a Devil. You just couldn’t see it. ”

"Be that as it may, it's fuckin  _ dangerous  _ out there now.” She growls. “It's not safe. It's gonna get you  _ killed." _

"I've been doing this for almost three, four years now. I know, Watanabe. And I don't  _ care.  _ Someone needs to do what I do, so I do it." Peter says as harshly as he can.

It doesn’t matter if she’s saying it because she gives a damn,  _ she doesn’t get to tell him what to do. _

"I don't wanna see you end up dead, kid." Watanabe whispers angrily.

"I don't either.” He snaps. “But if I do, make sure they put  _ 'Couldn't tell the difference between fearless and stupid'  _ on my tombstone. The Devil said it once. He was being so serious, but I still thought it was funny."

He smiles at the memory, for just a moment.

Then he laughs and looks away.

“Wait wait, naw, I got it.”

Peter leans backwards with a shark’s grin, slipping out into empty air.

“Make sure it says:

_ “May he burn in hell.” _

———

_ "Remember–  _ Sunday.” Foggy had said. _ “Meet me at the firm, dress nice, do  _ not _ wear Castle's hat, I will accept literally any other accessory." _

Peter glares up at the man himself.

“You said literally any other accessory.”

Foggy mugs at the fabric hanging loosely around his neck.

Anxiety buzzes silently in the back of his mind.

"Peter," he says slowly, "that is a bandana soaked with your blood. I've seen it. I've cleaned it. I've  _ smelled the copper." _

"This is a new one." Peter says as brightly as he can.

"That makes me feel  _ so much better." _

"It should. I've got cords in my bag."

"It  _ doesn't. _ Peter, Pete, darling child,  _ why are you bringing them?" _

Peter squints at him.

Because.

Foggy.

Foggy you should know why.

_ Foggy. _

"Just in case. Wanna be prepared."

"But do you  _ need it?"  _ Foggy stresses.

"Do you really wanna test fate like that?" Peter asks instead of answering.

Foggy purses his lips.

Squints up at the sun angrily.

Yells loudly into the crook of his elbow for one long moment before straightening .

His expression is resigned.

Peter has won the battle of wills.

“Fine. Fine! Whatever, I don’t care. Move along, Shutterbug, we’ve got a long ride ahead of us with traffic, and I don’t wanna be late.” Foggy scowls, shepherding Peter into the nice car that looks just a bit too much like that black SUV for comfort.

It’s a different model, and it’s day time, and there are no stains, but it’s hard to break old habits, old weariness.

It’s been four years.

_ It’s been four years. _

It feels like beating a dead horse, but he can’t help it.

Peter hasn’t had a nightmare about it for ages, but it’s not something he can really forget.

There are some things that just stay with you forever.

Like car doors and red snow and falling buildings and flickering, broken face masks.

The stay and decay, buried like time capsules in the back of your mind, waiting for you to find them again .

Foggy shuts the door, and Peter curls up against the far window.

The driver twists in his seat to look at them, over where the divider would pop up, and rests his elbow on the thin opening.

“We all set?” He asks gruffly, and Peter tilts his head, trying to place his face.

Foggy pops open his briefcase and runs his fingers through the papers one last time before snapping it closed again.

“I’ve got everything.”

The driver glances over at Peter.

“You too, kid?”

Peter squints and tilts this way and that before–

Ah.

Happy Hogan.

That’s  _ Happy Hogan. _

Okay.

Okay.

Congratulations, Peter, your brain’s facial recognition software is shit .

He’s only met him a couple times in passing, on the way to the airport to go to Germany, and then back to his apartment afterwards to be dropped off, but he really should’ve put two and two together.

Happy raises an eyebrow, and Peter jolts back to the present.

He rattles his backpack, just a little, and listens to the sounds of collision.

Cord, first aid kit, books, homework, spools, carefully packed polaroid camera, snacks… 

“Sounds right.”

Foggy makes a face.  _ “Peter.” _

Peter makes a face back.  _ “Foggy.” _

Happy rolls his eyes and gives this great blustery sigh before turning back around to properly face forward.

“Ideal ETA is about fifty minutes,” he tells them as the car pulls away from the curb. “Might be longer with traffic, but we’re going to get there after the Wakandans either way, so don’t worry too much.”

That sounds about right.

He remembers how quickly T'Challa's ship arrived in Siberia, how quickly it left.

They really were the most advanced nation in the world.

It was amazing.

The drive itself passes pretty quietly for the most part.

Foggy scrolls through his phone for the first part of it before taking out his papers and files again and reading through them.

Peter works through some of his homework for the first… thirty minutes?

Thirty minutes.

He tries to finish most of it in class so it doesn't get destroyed, or bled on, or lost, but.

Stuff happens.

It gets pretty boring pretty quickly though.

He knows calculus.

He uses calculus every  _ day. _

And that makes the homework just.

Boring.

It's boring.

Not nearly as fun as running equations in his head so he doesn't hit the pavement.

Peter stuffs the paper back in his bag and digs around for something more interesting.

His fingers catch on silk, and he pulls out a spool of web.

Foggy zeroes in on it instantly, setting his papers down as Peter quickly runs the thread through and around his fingers like cats cradle.

It's good for the spider part of his brain, he’s found.

Relaxing.

Makes the ice cold Sense on the back of his neck  _ calm the fuck down. _

Foggy continues to watch him as he starts making patterns in his hands, and eventually quirks an eyebrow.

"You Charlotte's Web now?"

Peter makes a face.

_ "No."  _ He grumbles.

"You positive?" Foggy asks.

_ "Yes."  _ He says.

"Sure looks like it, buddy." Foggy hums, unconvinced.

Peter pouts at him.

_ "Foggy." _

"Yes, darling child?"

"Let me  _ live." _

"No."

Peter mugs at him with all of the fury he can muster.

Which is, admittedly, a lot.

_ “Mean.” _

Foggy shrugs gracefully.

He has like, a million relatives.

He’s probably immune, the bastard .

“Cand is worse.”

Peter squints at him suspiciously, and that’s when the car finally rolls to a stop on a long stretch of pavement.

He can see planes in the air, can see the shapes of buildings in the distance, but it honestly looks more like a pale desert than a landing strip.

“We’re here,” Happy announces dully as he steps out of the car.

He opens Foggy’s door first and Peter takes that as a chance to scramble out of his seat and onto the tarmac, silk still tangled in his fingers.

Happy grabs his backpack without being asked and makes a shooing motion at the both of them, herding them further up the runway.

A great gleaming ship waits for them, sleek and black and almost otherworldly.

It looks exactly like how he remembers it, except this time, it’s not taking anyone away.

It’s bringing them back.

Peter starts to run, quickly biting through the webbing in his hands with barely a thought and stuffing it into his pockets.

_ He didn’t know he could do that. _

Foggy lets him go.

He knows how important this is.

The gang way is already down, two other cars sitting next it and a gaggle of people clustered around the hatch itself.

Bucky stands out against the backdrop of them all, alive and breathing and real.

He’s okay.

He’s  _ okay. _

He’s not like Matt.

He’s still here.

_ He’s still here. _

And then Bucky looks over and he  _ smiles  _ with his eyes and his shoulders and his teeth, crows feet crinkling like tissue paper.

He looks so  _ happy. _

So  _ tired  _ but also so, so  _ happy. _

And Peter starts to crumble before he can even stand.

He sort of just–

He’d been waiting for it, for the moment where everything went wrong.

He’d been waiting for the government or SHIELD or HYDRA, been waiting for everything to go sideways, been waiting waiting  _ waiting _ for Bucky and the trial and everything to slip through his fingers like sand.

Nothing ever goes right for him.

Not with the Parker Luck dogging his steps.

Not with his parents and his uncle and his brother  _ dead. _

Not with red coating his hands.

It’s not paranoia if the universe is really out to get you .

A hand settles on his shoulder.

Peter wishes it was more grounding than it is.

Foggy gently pushes him forward,  feather soft and twice as careful , like Peter might break.

Normally he’d protest, but right now he feels too fragile to care.

The group at the hatch parts and spreads like the ocean, fanning out to stand on either side with Bucky at the center.

Captain Rogers and the Falcon on his right, standing shoulder to shoulder, something freezing at the sight of him and Foggy.

Probably just him.

Maybe the Falcon remembers Peter after all.

The Black Widow stands on Bucky’s right, next to Clint and a woman that looks painfully familiar in her dark suit and bluetooth.

Mr. Stark stands the farthest away, talking with T’Challa and a girl that could be his age.

T’Challa mentioned a sister once.

Maybe that’s her.

Bucky is the first to move towards them, sweeping Peter up in a hug, so very careful with only one arm to his name.

He grabs back and hopes for one stupid,  _ stupid  _ moment that Bucky won’t let go and he can just stay this way forever, away from the death and the guns and the pity.

It’s stupid.

But Bucky squeezes him tighter anyway, like he knows exactly what Peter’s thinking, like he’s saying  _ it’s okay. it’s okay. it’s okay. _

“I’m back,” he whispers just loud enough for Peter to hear. “Jus’ like I said. Jus’ like I promised.”

“No buildings,” crawls it’s way out of his mouth,  rotten and twisted and sour like acid.

Bucky laughs into his hair, but it sounds painful,  the way it rattles in his chest like glass .

“No buildings.” He says.

“No C-4,” drags it’s way out of Peter’s throat like a dying thing.

“No C-4.” He says.

“Okay,” he whispers to the fabric of Bucky’s shirt as the anxiety starts to fall like brick and mortar. “Okay.”

“‘m right here, kid.” Bucky says softly. “Right here. Not goin’ anywhere.”

“Matt said he would come back,” Peter croaks. “An’ he didn’t.”

Bucky sighs, a great big thing that echoes through his whole body and down to his bones.

“I know. I’ll try to do better , alright?”

“Alright.”

And Peter–

Lets go.

Takes a step back to rub at his eyes and drag a hand down his face and squirrel his way under Foggy’s arm because he suddenly feels  _ tired. _

Bucky watches him go with a deepening of his crows feet, and then turns to call Mr. Stark and T’Challa and the girl over.

“Are you done?” Foggy asks softly.

Peter buries his face into Foggy’s suit.

He sighs and runs a hand through Peter’s hair. “Alright.”

T’Challa smiles at Foggy when he reaches them, and Peter sees Mr. Stark carefully shuffle around so that someone is always between Bucky and himself.

He wonders if it’s precautionary for him or for Bucky.

If he’s afraid Bucky won’t be able to control himself, or if he’s afraid  _ he  _ won’t be able to control himself.

Maybe it’s both.

“Franklin Nelson, I presume.” T’Challa says with a smile and extended arm.

Foggy takes it. “You presume correctly, your Majesty.”

“Wonderful.” He leans over to raise an eyebrow at Peter. “Are you alright?”

“Fine, your Majesty,” he mumbles into Foggy’s suit jacket.

“He’s been restless and panicking for days,” Foggy explains. “And now that we’re here and nothing’s happened he’s exhausted.”

“ Stop  _ telling him things, _ _ ”  _ Peter whines.

Foggy runs a hand through his hair again. “Hmmm… No.”

_ “Ugh.” _

T’Challa smiles again.

“That is quite understandable. It has been a bit stressful for us as well.”

“I haven’t been stressed.” The girl says.

T’Challa’s face goes blank.

“Because you have building arms instead of compiling evidence.” He says gruffly.

The girl mugs at him. “Because I have  _ already done it.” _

“Then where is it?”

“In my notes,” the girl says stiffly.

T’Challa raises an eyebrow.

“And if I were to look in your notes, right now, it would be there.”

The girl squints at him, and then purses her lips.

“I am going to just. Make sure that none of the technicians deleted it.” She says loftily, and starts to walk towards the hatch.

“Of course.” T’Challa calls.

“I am!”

_ “Of course.” _

She turns around and flips him off as she walks backwards into the ship.

Bucky snorts and Foggy holds back a laugh that Peter can hear  bounce around in his throat.

“Teenagers.” T’Challa says dryly.

Foggy does laugh at that, a chortle that he tries to cover with a cough.

_ “Anyway,”  _ T’Challa says with a pointed glare back at the ship. “I believe we should start discussing our approach and what we can do to make sure Sergeant Barnes regains his freedom.”

Foggy coughs one more time into his fist before straightening

“Of course,” he says seriously, shoulders smooth and confident.

Foggy is probably the best lawyer that Peter knows now.

They’re going to win this.

They have to.

There’s no other options.

"Let's get to work."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, because my beta started freaking out: Ned isn't in any shit I just think he's cool and a bitchin hacker


	3. By the Wild Beasts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you think they’ll change the definition for brainwashing after this? Like, ‘On a scale of Charles Manson to HYDRA, would you please rate your experience?’”  
> Foggy looks up from his laptop and purses his lips.  
> “Peter.”  
> He tosses his hands up and winces at the tugging of his stitches.  
> “I’m just saying!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yesterday I found out that one of the numbers for the beast that rises from the sea is 616 and I'm still not over it  
> Poetry with the // in the beginning is!!! From!!! MadiMay who has written tWO WHOLE POEMS so let me just cry for a minute  
> Also, a warning: there's some google translated Russian at the end of this chapter, I can post all the meanings at the end if everyone wants, but Peter explains most them, and the ones he doesn't are self explanatory

There’s a woman standing at the door to Peter’s apartment.

Staring down him and Peter and Michelle.

She smells like alcohol.

She makes Peter look _sad._

Ned’s never seen him make that kind of face before.

He’s more familiar with the happy and the angry ones.

The sunshine and the lightning.

Not the aching look splashed across Peter’s cheeks and eyes like stars before vanishing in a sunrise.

Ned trades a glance with Michelle.

She purses her lips and shrugs, and that’s when Peter says, “Hi, Miss Jones.”

“Jessica. _Jess.”_ Miss Jones stresses.

 _“Miss Jones.”_ Peter insists.

_“Kid.”_

Ned trades another glance with Michelle.

_Jessica? I need to go get Peter._

“I’ll call you Jess when you stop drinking.” Peter argues.

Miss Jones makes a face at him.

“That’s not gonna happen.”

“Exactly.”

Miss Jones snorts and pulls a flask out from _somewhere,_ taking a long swig before squirreling it away and back into her bag.

“Clever,” she drawls, and then frowns as she digs around in her pockets. “Got a present for you.”

Peter furrows his brow.

“Oh?” He mumbles, and it sounds cautious, weary.

Like present means something _bad._

And then Miss Jones throws a card at him, glinting gold in the light of the stairwell.

Peter catches it easily, and frowns at whatever he sees written across it.

Ned can’t make out the words before he stuffs it into his jacket.

“What is it?”

Miss Jones purses her lips, throws a glance at them, and looks back at Peter.

“You ever heard of Wade Wilson?” She says lowly.

Peter squints at her, tilting his head side to side like he’s swishing the name around.

“Vaguely. The guy with the swords?” He asks.

_What?_

“Yeah, him. You heard of the place he takes contracts from?” Miss Jones says next.

Peter nods cautiously.

“They deal in cards for contracts there.”

Peter blanches, all of the blood suddenly draining from his face.

_“Shit.”_

That's.

That's a bad reaction.

That's bad.

Whatever she just said is _bad._

“It’s an old card, but I’m pretty sure you knew that.” Miss Jones adds, with a tilt of her head. 

Peter presses a hand to his mouth, and then flaps his hands around, and then crosses his arms tight across his chest like he’s hugging himself.

Ned can see his fingers dig into the space between his ribs.

“Where’d you get this?” Peter whispers.

“Guy came into my office asking me to look for them,” She answers. “I threw him out.”

“It’s old though, I don’t–” Peter hugs himself even tighter, his knuckles turning white. “I don’t understand why it’s popping up again.”

Miss Jones looks uncomfortable. “It got renewed.”

“By?”

“Guy with a metal plate.”

Again.

_What?_

It must mean something to Peter though, because he suddenly and without warning rips his hands away from his chest to drag them through his hair, pacing.

“I need to– talk. To some people. Shit.” He mumbles breathlessly. “Shit shit shit. Has anyone–?”

“Besides the guy that came to my office? I don’t know. No big names are out, but I can fish around.” Miss Jones looks even more uncomfortable when she hesitantly adds, “Consider it free of charge. Don’t even have to pay me.”

Peter looks so _pale_ and says, “thank you,” in a small voice that sounds about as strong as air.

Miss Jones stuffs her hands in her pockets and tilts her head away, like she can't bear to look. “I’m… I'm sorry kid. I know it’s rough.”

There's something weird about the way she says it, though.

The way she says ‘ _I'm sorry’._

She doesn't sound like she's apologising for this card, and whatever it says.

She sounds like she's apologising for something else.

Something that makes Peter hunch in his shoulders even more, hands braced behind his neck.

"Don't worry about it," he breathes. "It's not your fault."

Miss Jones rolls her shoulders, and Ned hears something pop, almost painfully loud.

"I just... Wish I could've done more. I'm sorry that this is all I have."

Peter looks up at Miss Jones, and when Ned catches sight of his eyes, he doesn't think he's ever seen anyone look so old.

So _tired._

"It's not your fault," Peter repeats, voice aching in a way that makes Ned's heart hurt. "You did everything you could."

Miss Jones drags a hand down her face, presses her palm into her mouth and closes her eyes.

She looks exhausted.

"Sure kid," she breathes and opens her eyes. "Sure I did. I'll let you know if I find anything. Stay… safe, I guess. Stay safe."

Peter bobs his head and twists away.

Ned can't see his face anymore.

"You too, Miss Jones. I'll let you know if things change."

She nods, a stiff, halting motion, and then strides past them and towards the stairs, a mountain on her shoulders.

Peter watches her go like he’s afraid to look away.

Ned hated that conversation.

He hated that conversation within a conversation.

That whole thing was.

It was layered and full of double meanings, full of things he doesn't understand, and he's getting tired of this thing with Peter that only seems to get worse.

It's all terrible and horrible and _sad_ and he wishes he knew whatever it was that Peter got up to, that made him know all these people, that made him so melancholy and jaded.

He wishes he knew why Peter had bullet wounds, why Peter had so much death around him, why Peter was always so so _tired._

Ned wishes he knew.

And he's starting to get tired of just wishing.

He's starting to get tired of just waiting for Peter to tell them.

He's starting to get tired of not _doing anything._

———

There was graffiti in New York.

This isn't anything new.

It's New York.

Tagging is like a past time for some people.

There's a special kind of graffiti that she's talking about though, that sprung up around the time after the Battle of New York.

Michelle thinks calling it The Incident is stupid.

It was a battle.

It's foolish to pretend it was anything different.

Anyway.

Graffiti.

After the Battle of New York, people started painting murals of the Avengers, started tagging the names of the vigilantes in their burroughs, started using spray paint to attack the world.

There's a mural of all the Avengers in Midtown on the building across from Stark Tower that's been there since the Battle of New York, and another of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes in Brooklyn that went up sometime between the fall of SHIELD and the Sokovia Accords.

Harlem is full of paintings of Luke Cage, and she's noticed taggings of a dragon all over Chinatown.

Bed Stuy has arrows on their street signs, bull's-eyes hanging off of buildings, free form pictures of hawks.

Hell's Kitchen has scripture on their walls and messy silhouettes painted with horns, lights surreptitiously changed to blood red and the occasional white skull.

All of Manhattan had murals of Spider-man, had support beams for him to grab onto and leap from, and so did Queens and Brooklyn.

He's the only vigilante Michelle knows of that has the kind of mobility he does.

But lately, she's been seeing new tags, new words, new paintings.

Everyone knows about how the Devils disappeared almost a year back.

Everyone knows that some guy in a skull mask was lurking in Hell's Kitchen for weeks after.

Everyone knows that.

So everyone heard about how Daredevil came back for one night, and then disappeared again.

And everyone heard about how the Antichrist did a circuit around the island, digging his heels back in and attacking the maggia with a single minded frenzy.

And _everyone_ heard about how he came back alone, without a Devil to back him up.

The worst part of that though, was when he forgot.

It was hard to not hear a Death Knell, because when it sounded, it was _loud,_ and it was meant to be heard.

Sometimes the Antichrist would whistle a Death Knell, and no one would come.

Not at first.

There were times when someone _would_ show up, a guy with a glowing fist that usually stuck to Chinatown, but there was never a Devil to come nip at the Antichrist’s heels.

Hell’s Kitchen was down a demon, and everyone knew it.

Old habits were hard to break.

Death Knells still sounded across the city.

A city that was rapidly being overcome with red paint and red blood.

It was hard to not hear at least a little about how the underbelly of the city was changing when you lived in New York, especially when the results were being splashed across every news outlet in the city.

Something with the maggia, something with guns, with people disappearing and with people dying.

Something that made the Prince of Hell’s Kitchen raise his head and bear his teeth from where ever it was he was hiding.

And that’s where the paint came in.

People were acting like his reappearance was some kind of second coming, some kind of sign, and they were writing it across the walls.

 _“_ _When Soldiers are silenced and Devil's are dead//Who can we trust in this quiet dread_ _”_ was the first one Michelle saw, scrawled in messy paint on a bodega wall.

She took a picture and it was gone, painted over or washed off, the next day.

The second was a recreation of some monster Michelle didn’t recognize, some great beast with seven heads and the faces of people she recognized, like Fisk, and people she didn’t, like a man with a huge forehead and scars across his skin, crowns on its tens horns, and jagged words that said _“_ _Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it_ _?”_

That one stayed up for almost three days before getting defaced.

Ned found the third when the team was leaving through the back entrance of the school, and a great big silhouette had been painted on the building across from them, wreathed in red and flame.

Written atop in dripping calligraphy was _“_ _He has bled, he has burned, he has sacrificed//He is called the Antichrist_ _”._

Eugune had lost his mind, taking picture after picture, posting on every account he had.

Liz had looked at it in irritation, but Michelle saw her taking a picture and smiling.

Cindy had called Betty Brant and told her all about the crazy graffiti across from the school.

And Peter had… 

Peter had looked at the shadow and closed his eyes, smiling.

Soft and then great and big, crinkling his eyes at the edges in crows feet like he was so happy he could burst.

Like the colors of it all were drowning him, but he didn’t mind.

Michelle looked for Ned, and saw him looking at Peter too.

Saw him looking at Peter and the way he looked at the mural like it was his own personal absolution.

Like it was the only thing he would need to be happy ever again.

And something horrible started to grow in the back of Michelle’s mind.

———

“Do you think they’ll change the definition for brainwashing after this? Like, ‘On a scale of _Charles Manson_ to _HYDRA,_ would you please rate your experience?’”

Foggy looks up from his laptop and purses his lips.

“Peter.”

He tosses his hands up and winces at the tugging of his stitches.

“I’m just saying!”

Karen’s head pops up from behind her stack of papers.

“Are we talking about serial killers? Because I love talking about serial killers.” She says very seriously.

“I was asking Foggy if Bucky’s trial would change the definition of brainwashing used in a court of law.” Peter explains. “Like, Charles Manson brainwashing on one end and HYDRA on the other.”

Karen frowns thoughtfully. “It should. Charles Manson got people to commit murder and other crimes but HYDRA like, completely rewrote Barnes and made him assassinate people for seventy years.”

Peter gestures at her with both arms. “See Foggy? Karen gets it.”

"Karen, please don't encourage him. I'm tired. He's tired. You're tired. We're all tired, and we need to finish going through these last few files so that we can go _home."_

"Oh, I'm done," Peter assures him. "I've just been looking at crime reports and cold cases now, and like, I gotta say: _There is so much crime in New York, no one should live here._ Syracuse _alone_ is a _nightmare."_

Foggy mugs at him.

 _"Child."_ He grits out. "Why didn't you _say anything I could've given you the last couple of papers."_

He blinks.

"That honestly didn't occur to me. I haven't slept in a couple days."

_"Again?"_

"If it's any consolation, Mr. Stark and Miss Potts won't let me into the tower until I've slept for at least eight hours."

Foggy frowns at him. "Good for them, now go the fuck to sleep."

Peter frowns back and opens and closes his mouth a couple times, trying to find the words.

It’s always harder to do when he’s tired.

“I can’t, Fogs.” He starts slowly. “I’m pulling double patrols and I can’t miss them. Spider-man does all my recon and then AC is all my extraction. I promised Watanabe that I would look into a gun deal tonight, and I can’t miss it. We’re getting really close to Hammerhead. _Really close._ Like, maybe enough to book him for a while, close. It’s not gonna last, obviously, but it’ll slow down the maggia for at least a little bit, and that’ll help… _so many people.”_

Foggy looks at him like he’s something sad.

Like he’s some dead thing that’s been washed to shore, pushed to the surface by the tide.

It’s not a foreign expression.

He makes that face all the time now.

Sometimes, Peter wonders what Foggy sees when he looks at him.

If he sees the ghost of someone they knew.

Then he decides that that’s too painful, and tries to think of anything else.

“You could always ask Danny to do it instead.” Foggy suggests and looks back to his laptop, the nebulous thing dead and gone. “If it’s in Harlem I’m sure Luke wouldn’t mind looking into it.”

“But that’s… that’s not the _same,_ Foggy.” He protests, and wishes he could get across the horrible thing in his bones that _needs_ to bust Hammerhead on this.

To show he can do this on his own.

To get his first real win.

Without Matt.

Without Daredevil.

“And besides! Spider-man and the Antichrist are already on this! I can’t bring in more people, because when it’s one or two, that’s just someone that won’t quit.” Peter says, and swallows past the dryness on his tongue, in his throat. “If you make it three or four, that’s a conspiracy. That’s a _threat.”_

Karen’s face twists into something stoney and cold, lips pursed and eyes hard.

The face she gets when she’s upset but doesn’t want to show it.

They all know this.

They all remember going against Fisk.

And they all remember going against the Hand.

They can’t not.

It’s too raw.

Everything is still too raw, and sometimes he doesn’t know how he can stand under the weight of it.

Peter wants to go back to making jokes about serial killers.

It was easier than this horrible beast they found waiting at their feet, risen from the sea, great and terrible.

Foggy holds his face in his hands, leaning on the table on his elbows.

His hair is a loose curtain, and Peter can’t see his face.

This always happens when all three of them come together.

It happens every time, but they keep on meeting up.

Like there isn’t a great gaping hole in each of their sides, scabbing and tender.

They all hate Miss Jones and Danny and Mr. Luke Cage some days.

They all hate Stick and Elektra most days.

But every once in a while, when they're all low and bloody and _aching…_

Every once in a while, they all really hate Matt.

———

Man, he does _not_ need this.

He digs his boot further into the back of his guy and clicks his tongue, idly examining his claws.

He’s going to have to sharpen them again.

They’re getting dull from all his climbing.

“C’mon, all I need’s a time and place for this deal. It’s not that hard.”

His guy breathes furiously into the ground, great heaving gasps as the Antichrist puts more pressure on his cracking ribs.

“Seriously, I beat up like, ten people, and I picked you off like flies. You’re the last guy standin’ but no one _knows that._ It’s not like _I’m_ gonna say that you told me. It could’ve been anyone. Just talk, okay?” He pauses for a long moment, and then adds a little more pressure, dropping his voice to a growl. “You’re wasting my time.”

His guy breathes in with an aching wheeze, lungs rattling in his chest.

The sound of bones grinding is starting to get on his nerves.

“I don’t— _know!_ I don’t know! The boss don’t tell anyone except for the higher ups— to avoid leaks, like last time!” He yells into the concrete, heartbeat elevated and terrified. “I swear! I _swear,_ God _please don’t kill me.”_

It didn’t spike at any point he was talking.

Probably the truth.

He hates the smart ones.

The Antichrist pushes off the guy and cocks his head to the side.

“I don’t kill,” he drawls, and grabs his guy by the shirt collar, lifting him clean up. “Too messy. You new? They don’t usually cave this easy.”

His guy scrabbles at his arm eyes getting wider as his feet leave the ground.

“He’ll kill you,” he says with this horrible terror instead of answering. “Boss’ll kill you, and find your family, and kill them too.”

The Antichrist cocks his head to the side, and bares his teeth in a lazy grin with too many teeth.

Jokes on this guy.

He’s heard worse threats than the words of a scared, green mobster.

He cut his teeth on back alleys and gunshots.

And Fisk was so much scarier than Hammerhead could possibly ever be, with his trail of cold bodies that he’d known warm.

Fisk was a different terror.

Hammerhead doesn’t scare him.

And even if he did, there's an army between him and May.

There's _Iron Man_ between him and May.

And there's a mask between the Antichrist and Peter and May Parker.

He's not worried.

Has to not be worried, or the grief of someone living will swallow him whole.

“Can’t kill what you don’t have. This’s sweet and all, but really,” he lets his smile fall. “You should be worryin’ ‘bout yourself.”

And then he hits the guy’s jaw hard enough to crack the bone, and drops him like the limp doll he is.

He sighs and crosses his arms for a moment.

Looks like he’ll be canvassing tonight.

Peter groans.

He _hates_ canvassing.

He takes a running leap at the nearest wall and climbs up to the rafters to leave out of the window he came through.

Canvassing always takes all night, but it’s the second to last week of school tomorrow, so at least it won’t matter too much if he sleeps in class.

Peter kicks off of the outside wall of the warehouse and grabs onto the lip of the roof of the one across from him.

If he sleeps the whole day, maybe Mr. Stark will let him back into the tower.

He never said eight _consecutive_ hours—

He blinks.

The back of his neck buzzes with ice picks, and something cold slips down his spine and into his bones.

The air tastes like gunpowder.

There’s a bullet buried in the ground he’d just been standing on.

Warning shot.

_Warning shot._

Someone _shot at him._

Shit.

The words that crawl out his mouth are a quiet, “Well that was rude,” before he’s looking up and—

He squints.

"Who the _fuck_ are you?"

The guy with the gun squints the eyes of his suit.

Is he— are those swords?

_You ever heard of Wade Wilson?_

A flash of gold.

_They deal in cards for contracts there._

"I'm Deadpool, shortstack.” Wade fucking Wilson, high class mercenary for hire, says brightly. “Now I'm real sorry 'bout this, you seem like a nice guy, breakin' folks' arms and shit, 'specially Hammerhead's guys, but I'm getting paid at least enough to buy a small island to take you out of the picture."

Peter needs to think.

He needs to _think._

The last time a mercenary came after him—

_This isn’t last time._

He’s not fourteen years old and terrified.

He _doesn’t have Matt._

"Taskmaster couldn't.” He snarls with all the venom and bravado in his body. “I'd like to see you fucking _try."_

He just has to be fast enough to get away.

He doesn’t have to fight, to win.

He _just needs to get away._

Deadpool laughs, big and loud until it tapers into something darker. "Ooo, nice line. You gonna do the Death Knell and call reinforcements?? That'll probably be more fun. I've always wanted to fight Daredevil."

His heart freezes.

He can’t think.

_How does he not know?_

"Yeah well, that ain't happening." Peter growls, but it’s weak at best.

Anybody that ever brought it up, they said it to be cruel.

They said it to be _mean._

And those people, he could always beat them in a fight, could make them eat their words.

He doesn’t think he can beat this guy.

"You're _not_ calling for backup?" Deadpool asks, his voice dripping with disappointment.

Peter laughs, broken glass and burning buildings.

"Can't call someone that ain't there."

Deadpool goes still.

And then he says, "... No way. No fucking _way,_ is the– is the Devil _dead?"_

_Fuck._

Jesus fucking _Christ_ , this guy just keeps digging his fingers into all of Peter’s open wounds.

He snarls and bears his teeth.

All poison and fire and teeth, laced with acid and venom and hate.

He doesn’t sound like himself when he says, "Back the fuck off, Deadpool."

He doesn’t even sound human.

Deadpool takes a step back, gun lowering.

"Holy shit.” He breathes. “Holy shit, what the fuck happened to him?"

Peter bristles. 

"I said _back off._ It's _none of your fucking business."_

His voice wavers, and it doesn’t come out as strong as he wants.

Why can’t he move?

 _Fuck,_ why can’t he move?

 _"Jesus._ Wait a– wait a fucking _second,”_ Deadpool yells, voice filling with something that could be horror. “Did your voice just crack? How old are you?"

Leave while he’s distracted.

_Leave._

Goddamn it, move your feet and _run._

Peter snaps out his billy clubs. "Old enough to _beat the shit outta you."_

Deadpool takes another step back, dropping his gun completely, hands coming up to cradle his head.

"Holy shit. Holy _shit._ You're a baby.” He whispers with something that is _definitely_ horror. “A little baby, I held up a gun to a _baby,_ what the FUCK–"

Peter’s knuckles tighten on his club.

Some dim part of him is surprised the skin hasn’t torn.

"I'm not a baby!” He protests with a sudden anger he can barely feel. “Why does everyone _say that–"_

"Oh no, you're a baby.” Deadpool interrupts distractedly. “Trust me, I'm old as dirt. You're a little baby and I am gonna _kill_ the guy that put out your bounty holy shit. Holy shit."

“I— _what?”_

Deadpool gasps and is suddenly crouching on the ground with his hands behind his head.

“Oh my god Taskmaster tried to _trade you_ even though you’re a _baby_ oh my god you must’ve been _even babier back then FUCK.”_

Peter—

Does not know how to process this.

This is out of his realm of prepared responses.

He was not prepared for actual human interaction besides fighting.

And hesitantly asks, “Are you okay?”

You know, like an idiot.

Like he _shouldn’t_ be using this as a chance to fucking _book it._

And Deadpool just—

Makes a sort of strangled noise and throws his hands into the air.

“You shouldn’t be asking me that!” He shouts with disbelief. “You should be— running, or some shit! I just tried to _kill you!”_

Yeah, and?

People try to kill him all the time.

They never end up feeling _bad about it_ though, and it’s throwing him off his game.

“You seem… pretty fucked up ‘bout that right now.” Peter answers slowly. “So like. I don’ think you’re gonna be doin’ much of anythin’ for while at least.”

“Bless your fuckin’ _heart_ you summer child,” Deadpool says like an insult and puts his head in his hands. “Oh my _god._ Fuck, I need to talk to Weasel and Cable and _everyone.”_

Peter blinks and tilts his head.

This is… by far the weirdest thing to happen to him in a while.

“Why?” He asks wearily.

Deadpool looks up, and the eyes of his mask squint again.

“Because— you’re a _baby_ and I’m not gonna let anyone _murder you.”_ He says like Peter’s an idiot.

“Thanks?” He says back, _like a fuckin idiot._

Deadpool digs around in the pouches around his waist and tugs out a phone that is _bright ass pink_ with sparkles and a little Hello Kitty charm.

It’s… weirdly human.

He starts furiously typing, and Peter slowly puts away his clubs.

He thinks… he thinks he’s gonna be fine.

The ice picks are fading to a dull pickling, like how his skin feels when it’s knitting back together.

Deadpool’s head snaps up from his phone.

“Are there any more of you?”

_What?_

“Babies,” he says, like that clears everything up. “Little vigilantes. Are there any more of you?”

“Uh,” Peter cocks his head to the side and thinks _fuck it._ “That I _know of?_ Hawkeye the younger and uh, Spider-man? I didn’t tell you that, though.”

If Deadpool knowing how old he is keeps him from getting killed, then he has to risk it, but… 

“Please don’t tell anyone else.” Peter adds quietly. “We’ve worked hard to get people to treat us like adults.”

_I’ve worked hard to get people to trust me._

Deadpool is probably frowning under his mask.

“Baby Hawkeye has older Hawkeye, but I guess I can…” He looks back down at his phone and makes a sort of huffing sound. “I can put Spidey under the umbrella with you, that should… work. No ages, just a big _fuck off_ sign.”

Peter makes a cautious choice to sit down.

“That’s pretty nice of you.” He says slowly, and digs his claws into the roof. “There a catch?”

Deadpool snorts derisively.

“The _catch_ is no one _murders kids.”_

Peter squints.

“Are you sure that’s it? There’s usually a catch, in my experience.”

Deadpool eyes him from across the roof and puts his phone away.

“There ain’t a catch, boo, I just don’t wanna see people gettin’ paid for child murder.” He says and starts to stand. “If anything, _I_ should be asking _you_ what the catch is.”

Peter makes a face. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Deadpool flaps his hand dismissively. “What I’m _sayin’_ is, what can _I_ do to make it up to _you_ for trying to _murk you?_ Ugh, that was too many _yous.”_

Peter goes still.

He doesn’t really—

Wait.

No.

Yes, he _does_ have something he needs done.

This whole thing has already taken up so much of his time, but.

He should still have time.

Peter gives Deadpool a cautious smile.

“Wanna help me find a drug deal?”

———

There’s an end of year trip for the AcaDec team, because apparently, that’s what you do at not-poor-people schools.

Obviously, because Peter’s there, it goes badly.

It’s not even a Parker Luck thing, it’s _specifically because he’s there._

Which is.

You know.

A nice change from his general, seemingly unprompted familial misfortune.

He thinks.

He’d rather it just not happen at all, but alas.

A warning shot rings out and Peter flinches.

Doesn’t matter how many times it happens, if Peter can’t see the gun, it makes him nervous.

He doesn’t have eyes on if anyone got shot.

It feels too much like what happened with Ben.

And he can’t do that again.

The Parker Luck aspect of today’s disaster comes in the form of being stuck with his team, and stuck with civilians.

One of which is Officer Davis’ kid, and like, they just keep running into each other, don’t they?

And the kid’s friend, he’s the kid that Peter helped when he first met Bucky, so that’s a fun coincidence.

It’s like Kate and Clint all over again.

Really, New York is huge. Manhattan is a big place. He shouldn’t keep running into the same people.

It’s ridiculous.

In the distance, where the warning shot came from, he can hear words that sound like _aktiv_ and _mal’chik_ and something else that is _dangerously_ close to _reprogramming._

 _Asset_ and _boy_ and _reprogramming._

It paints a fairly easy picture to understand.

It’s not like he was hiding his involvement with Bucky’s case, even if it wasn’t strictly public knowledge yet.

And it’s not like he was hiding his involvement with Mr. Stark, who was paying for the trial, and Foggy, who was representing the case.

Bucky had always been afraid someone would find out Peter knew him, and that they were friends.

It had always been one of his biggest fears, he knew that.

Maybe Peter should’ve hidden better.

Another shot rings out, this time with words he can hear much more clearly.

"Найти его.”

_Nayti yego._

_Find him._

_“Shit.”_

Ned’s eyes snap over to him in an instant, and Peter drags a hand through his hair.

“What? Did you hear something?”

He frowns and closes his eyes.

He can’t look at Ned, can’t look at Michelle, can’t look at Davis’ kid with his big wide eyes full of _hope_ because he remembers Peter and he remembers what he can do.

“Найти его. Means _find him.”_ Is what he says to their huddled group of between twenty and thirty people, and tries to think.

Backup.

He needs backup.

This isn’t like when he was younger.

He needs armor, because these people, they don’t care how young he looks.

They’ll probably kill him when they’re done with him, and even leading up to that, he knows they won’t be gentle.

They’d probably find out about his healing factor before that though, and if that happened, he’d be dead in the water.

Ripe for the pickings.

Peter swallows past that nightmare and tries to pull his focus back to the present.

Back to problems he can actually face.

Backup.

Communication.

He digs out his phone.

It shows no bars, for a split second, and then wobbles back to three and Peter presses it to his forehead in relief.

Thank god for shitty signal jammers.

He looks for Mr. Stark’s contact and sends a simple _HYDRA at location_ before the bars drop.

He gets an _omw eta ten_ as soon as they come back.

Peter tosses his phone at Ned, who catches it with a fumbling grip.

“Once the bars stop dropping, I need you to call the contact that says _Old Man,_ and you tell him that people are looking to get JB back, so he needs to double check the facilities. He’ll know what it means.” Peter instructs, and looks away from the dawning understanding in Ned’s eyes.

“Peter, you can’t be serio—”

“Password is Ben’s birthday, alright?” He interrupts brusquely, and pretends that Liz and Cindy and Mr. Harrington aren’t all staring at him with a quiet horror. “Call that number and don’t waste a second.”

Michelle grabs him by the shoulder. “What are you going to do, Parker?”

He hasn’t been Parker in a while.

She must really be worried.

Or maybe really mad.

“You asked me,” Peter whispers lowly, for just him and Michelle and Ned to hear, “a long time ago, if I saved people in a red bandana with cord wrapped around my wrists.”

Ned furrows his eyebrows.

“No. No, Peter, you said—”

“I never lied.” Peter snaps, desperate to get them to understand. “I stopped. I wasn’t doing it then, not anymore. But I used to, and I did things then, made friends I don’t regret, and I’ll be damned if I let fucking _HYDRA_ scare me into hiding in a goddamn corner. Not after what they did to JB.”

He can hear footsteps, can hear the crow of “Солдатский маленький питомец,” like it’s said right in his ear, clear as day, cold as death.

_Soldier’s little pet._

“If I can, I’m going to find the jammer, but first I’m going to pull their focus, and you’re all going to _stay here,_ and stay _safe._ Help is on an ETA of ten, maybe nine minutes now.”

 _Click click click,_ go low heels right next to their hallway.

Peter covers Ned’s opening mouth with his hand and looks towards the entrance.

They’re hidden in some stone archway/building exhibit, behind the walls and in the shadows, but that _doesn’t mean they’re safe._

If Peter can see them, they can see him.

And a voice says, low and crooning, _“Come out, come out, wherever you are, little Soldier Pet.”_

Peter clenches his jaw, and makes a decision.

_Now._

He flips over the wall and out of the shadows.

Out of safety.

Out of Michelle and Ned’s reach.

Heartbeat to his far right, on the opposite side of the building.

He can’t see them, and goes into a roll to hide behind the archway and away from the building.

_Click click click._

He can do this.

He doesn’t have to be Spider-man.

He doesn’t have to be the Antichrist.

He can just be Peter Parker.

And Peter Parker is best friends with Bucky Barnes.

Peter Parker has been boxing for years.

Peter Parker is the son of SHIELD agents, of a cop and nurse, and _he isn’t scared._

He steps away from the arch and into the open, grins with all his teeth, too sharp and too _dangerous._

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s rude to call people names?”

_Leap of heartbeat._

_Surprised?_

“What, no come back? Is there a трус behind that gun of yours? All bark, no bite?”

_Clenching of a jaw._

_Flash of irritation._

“You know, he taught me a fun word for cowards. Much better than трус. God, what was it, what was it… oh! I remember! It was бесхарактерный. _Spineless.”_

_Click click CLICK._

_Moment of anger._

“Big word, I know, but he’s a good teacher. Taught me for _years._ All kinds of words. Like, I dunno. Желание. Ржавый. Семнадцать. Рассвет. Печь. Девять. Добросердечный. Возвращение на Родину. Один. Товарный вагон.”

_Sharp inhale._

_Heartbeat starts to increase._

He takes a deep breath, codewords ringing in his head.

_Are you afraid?_

“They don’t work anymore, you know. We’ve tested it. How does it feel, Water Snake? Your weapon doesn’t work anymore. Your Asset is gone.”

He _laughs,_ loud and wild and _cruel._

“You’ve lost. I know it sucks, but I’m sure you’ll move on. It’s like your motto, right? Cut off one head, and two more will grow in its place?”

They’re actively muffling their footsteps now, but it can’t hide them, not their foot falls and not their heartbeat, edging around the stone building as Peter mimics their steps.

They aren’t dead.

They aren’t Elektra.

And Peter can hear them in this great big room, loud and bright like a lighthouse at sea.

“You were so chatty before. What happened? Is it me? Don’t tell me it’s me. It’ll break my heart.”

He edges around the building on silent toes, hugs the corner and makes his way ever closer to the heartbeat.

It flutters like a rabbit in Central Park.

He thought HYDRA agents were supposed to be hardened.

Cruel.

Maybe they’re going the Hand route.

Outsourcing.

Or maybe they just really are a coward, someone who’s never seen combat outside of a base.

Someone who’s never been baited by a Spider.

“So boring. Hey, I got a question, and I want you to be honest with me.”

Peter steps out behind the heartbeat, and grabs the gun as they spin around, shoving it towards the ceiling.

Their face is young.

Not young like him, but still.

_Young._

He smiles.

“Are you afraid?”

What happens next is kind of blurry.

The HYDRA agent immediately lets go of their gun and lashes out, and Peter tugs the thing down so the first hit strikes metal before dropping and kicking it away.

The second hit grazes his face, and Peter kicks them in the stomach.

They’re probably wearing a vest because he meets more resistance than normal, and they stumble back for a moment.

Then they have a knife, lunging at him, and time slows—

Someone cries out, and he stops _paying attention, always pay attention to the victims, the civilians, the hostages,_ and the agent hooks an arm around his neck _tight_ and starts to bring the knife to his throat.

He short circuits, for just a moment.

And then Peter bites them.

This is the moment where it snaps back into focus.

Where he sinks his teeth into the meat of their upper arm, through the fabric and everything, hard enough that his jaw hurts.

He rips his head back when his teeth, strangely enough, start to feel _numb._

Blood, he decides, tastes pretty gross.

The HYDRA agent loses their grip on the knife and stumbles backward, away from him, and Peter takes the chance to kick them again, pushing them away and to the floor.

They groan but don’t get up.

That’s… 

That’s not right.

Peter wipes his mouth with his sleeve and takes a hesitant step forward.

Their arm is bleeding now, steadily soaking through the fabric.

That’s not right either.

The agent doesn’t move, breathing coming in short bursts.

Their heart is fluttering.

It sounds… kind of like poison.

People don’t lace their knives often, but it’s happened to Peter before, once.

His metabolism burned through it pretty quick but it was still… not great.

That’s what this agent sounds like.

Like they’ve been poisoned.

After he _bit them._

Peter slaps a hand over his mouth and it all hits him like a train.

Holy shit.

Holy shit holy shit holy _shit._

Not poison.

_Venom._

And then there’s a crash as the glass bay view windows _shatter._

A body hits the floor in a skid, gun spinning out of their grip and across the tiles.

The Iron Man suit lands right next to it.

It’s eyes are a bright blue-white.

They’re not dark.

They’re _not._

The face plate pops up.

“Is that _blood_ on your mouth?”

“Hey Mr. Stark! And like, only a little.”

 _“Only a little,_ he says. You couldn’t have waited an extra two minutes. _Two minutes.”_

“I was busy! There was a knife to my throat, I had things to do!”

“You— nope. Nope, I’m not touching that.” Mr. Stark says with finality, and turns to face the stone building. “Those heat signatures your friends?”

“Yeah.” 

“Great. Roll out, Autobots, we’ve got Avengers finishing with canvassing the building and taking out the rest of the HYDRA agents.”

Then, like an afterthought, Tony adds, “You know, when I told Capscile, he was so mad that he missed a base I thought he was gonna blow a gasket or something. Go full Looney Tunes smoke-outta-the-ears.”

Peter cracks a smile as people start to walk out of the stone building. “You’re old, Mr. Stark.”

Mr. Stark gasps in betrayal and scowls at him. “I prefer distinguished.”

“Which, in your case, is just another way to say _old.”_

 _“Kids these days.”_ He grumbles with a toss of his hands.

“That doesn’t help! You saying that, it doesn’t help you _at all.”_ Peter laughs.

Then Davis’ kid and his friend rush him like raging bulls and throw their arms around him.

He stumbles under the sudden weight.

“That was so _cool,_ how you were taunting them and then—”

“—with the gun and the kick and the _bite_ oh my gosh—”

“—and the Russian! You know _Russian_ that’s _crazy—”_

Peter doesn’t know _what_ kind of face he’s making, but Mr. Stark takes one look and laughs at him, big and loud.

Peter flips him off.

Both hands.

He deserves it.

His barnacles continue to chatter and talk over each other as people walk out of the stone building, the class that Davis’ kid was with going first, and then Peter’s AcaDec team following.

Ned still has his phone, so Peter does his best to catch Mr. Stark’s attention and mouth _venom_ before pointing with his chin to the HYDRA agent that he bit.

Mr. Stark makes a face, glancing between the two of them, before understanding dawns on his face, and he suddenly looks too _goddamn_ excited for his own good.

There’s going to be _many_ tests in his future.

He can tell.

He can almost _taste it._

The teacher for Davis’ kid calls for him and his friend (Miles and _Ganke,_ his name is _Ganke),_ and they take their sweet time peeling off, still yelling as they rejoin the rest of their group, which happily accepts them to continue their freaking out, but as a _herd_ this time.

Mr. Harrington makes a weak sort of noise to gather the attention of the team, of _him,_ but he’s trying his best to just _not look at them._

Mr. Stark pokes Peter’s HYDRA agent with his foot and calls him over.

He moves over to him gratefully, and they both look down at where they can see the two puncture marks from Peter’s teeth at the beginning of the score marks that are bleeding so much, staining the air with metal and copper.

He hadn’t unlatched his jaw.

He’d torn.

Mr. Stark whistles appreciatively, and quietly asks someone over the comms to bring something that Peter can bite because they need to make an antivenom now.

He stays close to Mr. Stark and far away from his AcaDec team.

But when he risks a glance out of the corner of his eye, they—

They stare at him like they’ve never known him at all.


	4. Keeper of the Gates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And he whispers, shaking and wheezing and tired, "With great power comes great responsibility."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Saint Peter was the keeper of the gates of Heaven, and like. Y'all. How could I NOT use that. It's ME

Ned watched as Peter compulsively checked his phone for the tenth time in as many minutes.

His hands shook.

They weren’t talking about the museum.

No one talked about the museum.

Not about the HYDRA agent, not about Peter, not about the Russian that had spilled from his lips.

Not about the connotations of  _ Asset  _ and  _ Words  _ and  _ Soldier Pet,  _ not about the cruelty of his laugh,  not about the haunting  _ “Are you afraid?” _

Not about the knife to Peter’s throat.

Not about the sudden blankness to his face.

Not about the teeth he’d sunk into the agent’s arm.

Not about the blood that had stained his mouth as he’d torn his head away.

_ Torn his head away. _

They didn’t talk about it, not the blood or the stumble or the silhouette of Iron Man as he flew through the windows.

Not about the kids who had looked at him with hope, with a reverence that spoke of familiarity, with an absolute certainty that as soon as Peter had gone over that wall  _ everything would be fine. _

Ned and Michelle, they didn’t talk about the confirmation of bandanas and bloody cord, didn’t talk about how Peter had spit  _ HYDRA,  _ didn’t talk about how he snarled  _ not after what they did to JB. _

_ They didn’t talk about the teeth and blood. _

They didn’t talk about the museum.

Peter seemed grateful for it.

He checked his phone again.

Ned spun his pencil between his fingers and pretended that Michelle wasn’t watching Peter like she was waiting for the final piece of  _ something  _ to come crashing, pretended that he hadn’t seen Peter with his teeth stained red, pretended that his  _ best friend, goddamnit, _ wasn’t staring at his phone with worry and nerves and terror, like it was going to come alive to kill them all.

Ned pretended that everything was still okay and spun his pencil.

He’s gotten better at it over the years.

The lying, that is.

He had to, when his best friend was Peter Parker, who lied like he breathed, easily and without thought.

But the museum just… 

They didn't talk about it, but Ned couldn't help  _ thinking  _ about it.

It felt like the accumulation of everything that had been happening over the years.

The bruises and the lying and the funerals, the wildness of Peter’s gaze and the bullet wound through his shoulder.

_ The bullet wound through his shoulder. _

He doesn’t think it could’ve gone differently, because as soon as Peter flipped over that wall, their fates were sealed.

It was written in stone.

There was no other way out.

Ned just wishes that instead of them having to find out or pressure Peter, he would  _ talk to them. _

Peter hated lying and Ned didn’t understand,  _ couldn’t  _ understand, why he didn’t just  _ stop. _

Why he wouldn’t just  _ give up the ghost. _

Maybe he was too hung up on them.

Maybe he was just too afraid to let go.

Maybe he just didn’t know how.

Or maybe he’d just been lying for so long that he didn’t know how to live with telling the truth.

It felt like it was long past another intervention, so far gone the point where they should’ve sat Peter down and said  _ you can’t keep doing this  _ that it was like they’d looked up towards the sun and somehow missed it.

Peter was crumbling.

He looked like he was okay, like he was coping and living and taking care of himself, but he wasn’t.

He was crumbling and fracturing and splitting to pieces.

There were bags under his eyes when they were at his apartment and he’d washed off the makeup, whole stacks of papers that had been highlighted and annotated and scribbled upon, piles upon piles of hand wraps that were stained red stuffed into his trash can.

Peter looked like he was fine.

Ned could tell that wasn’t.

He hoped that he would get better over the summer without school to worry about.

Something in him feared that it would get worse.

And then Peter let out a loud yell and threw his phone onto his bed before screaming at May to  _ “TURN ON THE NEWS.” _

Ned dropped his pencil as Peter flew into the living room and onto his couch.

Michelle had a look on her face like she wasn’t processing what just happened, and then scowled and stood up to follow.

Ned watched her go, and for a moment, he felt like that was all he did.

He followed Peter but he never caught up with whatever it was he was doing.

He followed Michelle but he never caught up with her suspicions.

He followed.

And he’d never catch up.

Then Peter yelled again, and Michelle told him to  _ “calm your fuckin tits, Jesus Christ, Peter,"  _ before going abruptly silent.

The moment passed, and Ned stepped into the living room.

May was staring at the TV with a grim expression, jaw clenched, and Michelle’s eyes were  _ wide,  _ her face blank as she drank it all in.

Peter looked like the drowning man that he was and the screen in front of him was the air that he needed to breathe.

And on it, there was a man.

His hair was long and dark, braided over his shoulder, his jaw square and his eyes facing forward.

He was missing an arm, surrounded by police officers as they walked up the steps of a great white building.

The camera followed him as he reached the top, and right there waiting for him was Mr. Foggy Nelson.

The view swung back to the anchor woman as the man headed inside, and that’s when Ned saw it, black against yellow at the bottom of the screen.

_ United States v. James Barnes. _

James Barnes.

James Buchanan Barnes.

Bucky Barnes, Captain America’s best friend, HYDRA’s  _ Winter Soldier. _

Ned felt cold.

And something caught in his throat as a realization washed over his mind.

James Barnes.

J.B.

JB.

_ HYDRA. _

_ Not after what they did to JB. _

_ He’s taught me lots of words. _

_ Your Asset is gone. _

Ned slumped into the armchair, and tried to find a pole star.

Something that was constant, something that would stop the  _ spinning. _

He’d called JB a ghost.

A ghost, because that’s what he was.

He was the ghost of Bucky Barnes, of HYDRA, of World War Two and 1943.

Peter had been talking about him for  _ years. _

Since Sokovia rose and fell like the tide.

That wasn’t that long ago, but it was still–

It was still at least  _ three years. _

He’d known the  _ Winter Soldier  _ for at least  _ three years  _ and  _ never told anyone. _

_ They don’t work anymore, you know. We’ve tested it. How does it feel, Water Snake? Your weapon doesn’t work anymore. Your Asset is gone _

We’ve tested it.

_ We’ve tested it. _

Ned covered his mouth with his hands and closed his eyes.

He tried to breathe.

He needed to breathe.

But the same two things kept running around in his mind, repeating over and over and over.

The same two things.

Over and over he thought,

_ Jesus Christ, Peter. _

_ What have you been getting into? _

———

Michelle felt like an idiot.

She felt like a goddamn  _ idiot. _

She should've realized.

She should've  _ realized. _

God, of course he'd been the kid in the bandana.

Of course he had.

Of course he'd lied by omission.

That was Peter's preferred poison.

Not outright lying but also not telling the whole truth.

And–

God, of course he knew a ghost.

Of course he knew  _ Bucky goddamn Barnes. _

_ JB and I were walking these dogs and they're so  _ fluffy–  _ look, see? _

_ I was talkin' to JB the other day, and we realized that lobsters are just scorpion mermaids. _

_ It was so cold yesterday, me and JB were both all messed up and it  _ sucked _ cause we had to fix a car first. _

JB, JB, JB.

_ James Buchanan Barnes. _

A ghost.

A phantom.

A Winter Soldier.

Michelle drags a hand down her face, pen tapping up and down on her notebook.

First Frank Castle, then Jessica Jones, then  _ Bucky Barnes, _ apparently  _ Iron Man,  _ and not just in a  _ he's my boss  _ sense.

Who else was he hiding in his shadow?

In the stories he told and the scars he hid?

Was Clint someone?

Was the new contact in his phone labeled  _ WW  _ someone?

_ Danny? _

How many secrets did he hold?

That thought, that horrible thing, that little seed, it grew and curled from right above her spine and into her brain, filled the lines of thought and electricity, drowned the impulses and plasma and blood until all she had was petals and leaves, roses falling from  _ her eyes and her ears and her mouth. _

Until all she knew was an organza nightmare of green green green that bled into red and black and fire and  _ teeth. _

Petals spill from lips, coughed up from her lungs and throat where they had drifted down down  _ down. _

Michelle had been writing this notebook for years.

Had been writing this _ series of notebooks  _ for years.

Because there was so much about Peter that she didn't understand, so many things that  _ didn't make sense. _

Things that added up and up and up, gradual like a snow fall, or things that she didn't see until they were staring her in the face like a windstorm.

Peter had watched someone die, once upon a time, and there was old shrapnel in his shoulder, and he hates almost anyone touching him without warning.

Peter hated Wilson Fisk personally, and had been to almost five _ (six) _ funerals in his life, and gunshots made him flinch.

Peter knew Russian like he'd been speaking it for years _ (he probably has), _ and there were high strength painkillers hidden under his sink, and he kicked someone in the jaw mid air when he was a four foot nothing eighth grader that wouldn't fight in his own defense.

Michelle presses her head into the name MATT MURDOCK(deceased).

There's only a few bulletins under it, same with FOGGY(?) NELSON.

– lawyer

– blind (childhood accident)

– went to school w/Foggy Nelson

– the Parker's lawyer

Under those, in newer ink, it said:

– went to Ben's funeral

– catholic

– dad was a boxer (murdered, orphaned age 10)

And finally, under those, it read this:

_ dead – HOW??? _

The ink and paper under her face didn't do much more to help than hitting it with her pen had.

Michelle doesn’t remember why she sat with Peter and Ned in middle school.

She thinks that what she said was something about Peter’s face, and the only reason she remembers is because he’d reacted with  _ “thanks, it’s the trauma.” _

The first piece to the puzzle, the first clue to the mystery.

She sat with Peter and Ned, it changed the course of her life, and she doesn’t remember why she did it.

Maybe she didn’t have one.

Maybe she’d done it on an impulse, on a whim, because Peter had been standing straighter lately, because she’d been bored sketching the same crisis, because Ned had been asking how his court case had gone a couple weeks ago and she was  _ curious what meek Peter Parker could’ve done– _

Ice shoots through her veins .

_ How his court case had gone. _

Court case.

_ Court case. _

Foggy Nelson who knew Matt Murdock, who knew what happened to him, who knew  _ Peter,  _ representing the Winter Soldier in the trial of the century, Frank Castle v. the People but a thousand times worse.

Eleven year old Peter gritting his jaw, drawling  _ “thanks, it’s the trauma,”,  _ whispering that he saw somebody kill someone, saying that he’d gone to Nelson and Murdock because they were the only one’s he could trust.

The mysterious disappearance of Matt Murdock that no one was looking into, the PI with super strength that apologized at his door, the way Peter spun through the air at twelve years old and  _ kicked someone hard enough to bruise for more than a week. _

Matt Murdock, and Peter Parker.

Matt Murdock.

Matt Murdock, the dead man no one spoke of.

Matt Murdock, the dead man who was blinded at a young age by ACE chemicals.

Matt Murdock, the dead man that represented the Parker’s in court when Peter was eleven years old.

Matt Murdock, the dead man that was the son of a murdered boxer.

Matt Murdock, who was an attorney at law.

Matt Murdock,  _ who was something more than he’d said he was. _

Matt Murdock, who was dead, dead, dead and  _ no one knew why. _

_ Matt Murdock. _

_ It all came back to Matt Murdock. _

Michelle needed  _ more than that. _

It didn’t matter what she knew if she didn’t know _enough._

She needed more than she had.

She needed more than coincidences, more than circumstantial evidence.

She needed proof.

She needed a confirmation.

She needed a  _ confession. _

And Matt Murdock was too dead to give her one.

Foggy Nelson was in the middle of a trial that, she was almost certain now, was at Peter’s request.

Karen Page was an unknown, somebody she’d only seen once at Ben’s funeral, and never again.

Jessica Jones was a paranoid PI that probably wouldn’t give her the time of day if she wasn’t a client.

Peter Parker had been lying to her for as long as they’d been friends.

He’d been lying since the day they met, and Michelle only knows because she caught him.

Because she’d caught him and Ned had seen it and they had pooled what they knew because that’s what they did now.

They pooled their knowledge on their murder-mystery of a friend.

Like he was the moon landing, or the illuminati, or the lizard people, or any other stupid, half-thought connspiracy.

Except he was real.

Peter was  _ real. _

He was real and he was hurting and hurting and  _ hurting  _ and he’d burn himself to the ground before he told anybody what it was he knew.

Peter had been lying to her as long as she’d known him.

If it were anyone else, she wouldn’t have stayed.

But it wasn’t anyone else.

It was Peter Parker, who changed slowly and gradually and then all at once, bursting like a firework before fading like smoke.

Who hated every lie he told.

Who looked like a mystery that desperately wanted to be solved.

Who was kind and funny and sarcastic and smart, who was angry even when he didn’t look like it, who had so much in him to give it was a wonder he hadn’t been left hollow and dry.

It was Peter Parker.

Her best friend.

He wanted an out.

He wanted to be found.

He wanted to stop lying.

She knew all this.

But she had to find it first.

She had to find the truth hidden in the lies, the things he let slip, the words he didn’t say.

Michelle had to  _ know  _ because if she didn’t, if she was lacking even one piece, it wouldn’t be enough.

Peter would shut back down.

He would fold back in.

He would lie through his teeth.

Peter had been lying to her since they were eleven years old.

She wondered how he hadn’t grown sick with the poison of it.

———

It’s the last day of school.

It’s the last hour of the last day of school.

It’s that last hour of the last day of school and he needs to  _ stay in his goddamn lane. _

Just–

_ Hhhh. _

Peter needs to calm down, needs to think past the dizziness in his head.

No one was talking about what had happened at the MoMA, what he did, and he’d left his rumors behind with middle school.

He doesn’t need more.

He  _ doesn’t. _

So he just needs to fucking  _ wait. _

Someone else will deal with it.

Someone else will deal with it, and he won’t have to get involved.

The Black Widow is talking about the Red Room today, and tomorrow Captain Rogers and the Falcon are going in for testimonies, and he does  _ not  _ need to be involved with another fight at school or NDA agreement when he could be watching the feed for the trial.

He just.

Needs.

To stay calm.

Channel your inner lawyer-Matt Murdock, Parker.

_ Calm yourself. _

Someone shoulder checks him, and he stumbles, but by fucking  _ God  _ he will  _ not  _ break at school, so he just grits his teeth and takes it.

Goddamn seniors.

Think they can get away with shit just 'cause they're graduating.

Peter'll show em.

He'll  _ show em a piece of his fuckin mind– _

Wait.

Wait no.

Stop.

Stop that.

Rumors.

He doesn’t fucking need them.

He doesn’t need rumors in school or fights on his record or to miss the trial feed that Mr. Stark’s been recording and streaming for him at the Tower every day after school.

He has self control.

Peter has so much self control and he is going to  _ use it. _

He doesn’t even.

He doesn’t even have to pay attention.

Just.

Coast through the last hour.

His hands are shaking.

A movie hits the whiteboard.

Last forty five minutes.

Someone tries to flirt with Michelle.

Last half hour.

Flash glances back at him.

Last fifteen minutes.

Peter breaks a pencil.

Zero minutes.

Ring of the bell.

_ Freedom. _

And.

Then.

It all slips through his trembling fingers.

Because someone clips Ned hard enough to send him sprawling right as they hit the bottom of the steps.

It’s on purpose.

Peter can tell.

He grits his teeth tighter, and feels something crack.

Might be a tooth.

_ Stay calm. _

He leans down to help Ned up and clicks his tongue at the duck tape keeping it together.

It hasn’t burst yet–

There's hot metal down his spine–

Someone shoves him to the ground and right back into Ned.

Blood stains the air where he skins his palms, and something in Peter feels  _ Red. _

He lands on his hands and knees and swallows everything down,  paints a blank canvas over the rage , because  _ he doesn’t get into fights at school. _

He pushes back onto his heels and takes Ned’s hand, pulling him into a crouch, and then helping him stand.

The world swims.

Peter doesn’t fight at school.

Because the fun thing about going to a new school like Midtown, is that almost all of the rumors from middle school had  _ stayed  _ in middle school.

Almost the entire student body treated him like any other normal student: with absolutely no attention spared from their phones or books or projects.

Peter had loved that.

He'd done everything he could to look nice, to present himself well, to act and appear like a normal student.

Pressed shirts and soft cardigans, flannel jackets and punny t-shirts, ironed jeans and his favorite shoes that Melvin might have made for him because he kept  _ ruining all the other ones. _

Thrown all the bared teeth and torn knuckles and budding bruises into the back of his mind, kept himself soft and kind and small.

He was one of the quieter kids, unassuming in a school full of geniuses, albeit one that didn’t have parents to come to career day.

And then Ben died.

And he was the kid with the dead uncle for almost a month.

Stupid.

_ Stupid stupid stupid  _ shouldn’t have had that  _ fight  _ Jesus Christ it’s  _ all his fault– _

But the thing is, the thing he's trying to get at, is that people don't know how dangerous Peter Parker is.

Not here.

Not Midtown.

Not his fresh start.

Flash and Cindy, Ned and Michelle, they knew, because of course they did, but everyone else had seen his pressed shirts and nice shoes and decided he wasn’t worth the weariness, not anymore.

At Midtown, things are different, because they never knew to be weary in the first place.

They don't know how _ angry  _ he is.

How good at  _ fighting  _ he is, a soldier’s protege in a sea of STEM students.

How much of a  _ temper  _ he has, cultivated and fueled by every slight and crime he sees and hears .

And that's what it comes back to.

It always, always comes back to just how angry he is.

How anxious and tired and depressed and  _ furious  _ he is.

At his old school, people knew not to challenge him to fight.

To not pick on people when he was around.

They knew that he could and would fight back.

Midtown is new.

In Midtown, he's just another smart kid.

_ He's not dangerous. _

He’s not wound tighter than a spring, he’s not splitting his knuckles every night, he’s not anxiously waiting for Bucky Barnes to be  _ free  _ so that they never have to worry about the omnipresent threat of capture hanging over JB’s shoulder ever again.

He’s little Peter Parker with the dead uncle and the dead parents and two entire friends.

He’s.

Not.

Dangerous

Michelle grabs Ned’s arm.

The back of Peter’s neck prickles like it’s being crawled all over by ants.

He throws out a hand, and catches the arm aimed to shove him back down to the pavement.

Michelle looks him dead in the face, eyes hard and lips pursed, and she doesn't look scared.

She looks  _ worried. _

"You don't need to do this," she whispers, not desperately- because Michelle Jones would never be desperate- with a quiet edge, and he's sure it's supposed to be near silent, but in the courtyard, to him, it's loud.

It's loud and he starts squeezing the hand caught in his.

Ned grabs his other wrist.

His eyes are pleading.

"It's fine,  _ I'm _ fine. Let it go, Peter. "

He clenches his jaw.

It's not fine.

It will never  _ be fine. _

Ned shouldn't have to take that kind of treatment.

No one should.

Ever.

Peter pulls away from Ned, and it's like pulling teeth.

Squeezes tight and feels the bones under his palm start to  _ grind. _

And he shoves  _ back. _

Glares as cold as he can behind the glasses he doesn’t need and snaps his mouth closed in a scowl to keep the fangs at bay.

Takes a step forward, hands low and hips heavy.

It’s instinctive.

The crowd balloons.

AcaDec watches with the most apprehension.

With the most carefully contained fear .

Grabs that  _ fuckin senior  _ by his collar and pulls him up, clenches his fist and pulls his hand back once, twice, snarls with all his teeth because it’s one thing if someone pushes him around, but not Ned, never Ned,  _ never his friends– _

_ "Murdock." _

And all of the air is pulled out of his lungs.

Pulled out and out and out and spun like fine silk around a spool and into a noose, closing around his neck as the blood drips out of his body and onto the concrete.

He drops the senior.

His nose is broken.

Miss Jones lets him fall.

The courtyard is silent in the buzz of the city and his knuckles sting.

One hit.

Only one hit.

His hands are shaking so hard he can feel it and the world is dizzy.

“That’s not my name,” drips out of his mouth like broken teeth and blackened snow slush, hollowed and cracking and twisted moltan like blown glass.

Miss Jones hums.

The air around her whistles as she turns her head.

“Yeah well, it got you to stop, didn’t it?”

Peter clenches his jaw.

“What do you want?” He grits out between the ice falling from his lips.

It’s so cold it feels like Siberia.

He looks up.

Miss Jones is a lone figure where the rest of the students have parted around her,  fanned out like wings.

Her hair is messy and tossing in the wind, and the bags under her eyes are purple.

He can smell the alcohol on her breath.

He can almost taste it from here.

She looks tired.

For a brief moment, he wonders what he looks like to her.

Who he looks like to her.

Glasses and rosary and  _ hate _ _. _

If what she said wasn’t on purpose.

If what she said was a reflex.

Peter closes his eyes.

Hearing sound bounce around is easier.

Jessica bobs her head forward and scuffs her boot across the ground. Folds her shoulders in.  Makes herself smaller. “Just wanna talk, kid. Luke found something.”

He presses his palms into his eyes, rides up the glasses and presses against his eyelids until stars dance against the darkness of his own skin.

And then he starts to walk.

Steps over the senior.

Focuses on the rattle of the wood in front of his face.

And doesn’t open his eyes as he reaches and then follows Miss Jones.

Peter doesn’t need to see to feel the stares.

He never has.

Michelle and Ned’s are the heaviest of all.

“How did you find me?” He asks and pretends that he feels more put together than he is. “I didn’t give you my last name. And my first name doesn’t match records.”

_ The records don’t match me. _

Miss Jones snorts.

He feels like she’d be the kind of person to blow a bubble with gum, and then pop it really loudly.

“I’m a PI, kid.” Miss Jones drawls, walking steadily towards what he thinks might be a van.

He hasn’t opened his eyes yet.

He doesn’t want to.

It's easier this way.

Nothing's shaking.

After a pause, she adds, “Nelson told me it was your last day of school and gave me the address, too.”

Peter scowls and hikes up his shoulders.

_ “ _ _ Traitor.” _

“He said you’d say that.”

“Congrats, he was right.”

Miss Jones snorts again, deep in her throat.

She doesn’t seem like the kind of gal to laugh a lot.

Scoffing and tching seem more like her style.

But what does he know.

He’s never interacted with her in a situation that wasn’t tinted with grief.

“Anyway, I told Luke and Danny to keep an eye out for your guys,” Jessica says lowly. “Anyone with a card and anyone maggia.”

Peter’s scowl softens to a frown and he opens his eyes.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he tells her.

She shrugs uncomfortably.

“Sure I didn’t,” Miss Jones mutters, before exhaling loudly and stuffing one of her hands in her pockets. “Luke called me last night. Someone got too close to his part of Harlem.”

He blinks at her for a moment, uncomprehending.

“What?”

Miss Jones rolls her eyes.

“Luke got you a guy,” she explains flatly. “For your maggia shit.”

He blinks again.

“Oh.  _ Oh.” _

“There he is. Now, I just wanted to know:” Miss Jones jabs a thumb at the van, and that’s when the breathing reaches his ears. “Where do you want me to drop this thing off?"

———

He doesn't spend a lot of time home anymore.

He doesn't spend a lot of time with May anymore.

Which is probably the worst thing that he could’ve done, all things considered.

Peter is a terrible person.

Because Peter lost his uncle.

May lost her husband.

May lost her sister- and brother-in-law, lost her husband, her  _ best friend, _ all within the span of a decade.

It doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is.

It’s three people over ten years.

It doesn’t seem like a lot, but it  _ feels  _ kind of like getting your heart cut out.

Peter thinks.

It’s what Matt and Ben felt like.

It’s probably what May will feel like too.

Maybe that’s why he’s avoiding her, avoiding being around her in the slim chances they have between him going to school and the internship and her going to MetroGen.

Because he’s terrified of getting close again and then having to grieve all fucking over again.

It’s not an excuse.

But it’s really all he has.

He’s too scared.

He’s always been too scared.

So he spends his time with Foggy or Mr. Stark or in Matt’s apartment wondering why the hurt won’t go away.

Peter doesn’t have that option today.

He’s out of school.

And May is off work.

And it’s June 5th.

And  _ Ben is dead. _

_ Ben is dead. _

And they’re alone.

They’re the last Parkers to bear the name.

To bear the curse.

To bear the misfortune.

To bear the Parker Luck.

His dad should’ve taken his mother’s name.

Ben should’ve taken May’s.

He should never have been born a Parker.

They should’ve ditched the name decades ago .

But they didn’t.

And now they’re the only ones left.

The only ones for the Luck to take.

It was a superstition, but it was one they'd all believed it.

One more impossible but horrible thing in a world of impossible and horrible things.

Ben had never practiced a lot.

He coasted by on quiet faith.

On forgotten Shabbat and stones on graves and a Torah in his nightstand drawer that Peter had never seen him read, right next to a rusted set of dog tags.

But he believed in the Luck.

He doesn’t remember his parents well enough to know if they did too.

He doesn’t even know what his mom practiced, if anything.

He never asked.

Because what kind of kid didn’t know his own mother’s faith?

_ He never asked. _

Would Clint know?

Would the Black Widow?

She'd told him that his parents would be–

Would be  _ so proud of you Peter. _

She knew his name.

She knew his mask.

Did she know the people that made him too?

Does she know where he came from?

She probably–

She probably knows more than he does.

She probably knows more than he does about the tombstones right next to Ben's, with their ten years wear and old, stacked stones.

With their withered flowers and eagle crests.

He’d thought they were for decoration once, five years old and far too young to understand that his parents really weren’t coming back.

Decoration to make the stones above their dead bodies look like something kinder than a plague that held their death dates.

But then SHIELD broke to pieces, spread their corpse across the internet, spoke their dying words to every conspiracist across the planet, and HYDRA was revealed to the world.

Peter was eleven, not even twelve.

Trying to forget about how he might lose his home.

He'd looked, drowned himself in it.

He'd never meant to find his parent's names.

He'd never meant to find them.

He'd never meant to know.

But he does now.

Now he knows what they mean, those eagle silhouettes.

Now he knows that they’re a symbol for their service.

Now he knows that they were SHIELD agents, and all he has are old research papers, a beaten locket, and a couple boxes of clothes and books to show for it.

They didn’t leave a lot behind when they got on that plane.

There wasn’t a lot to recover.

It’s been ten years.

He can’t remember their birthdays as something other than gravestones.

Ben is different.

Ben was a person in memory before he was a corpse.

He didn’t die far away.

He died in his arms.

He raised Peter.

He was Peter’s  _ dad. _

He was Peter’s dad and May was his mom and now they were alone with Ben’s blood on Peter’s hands on his birthday dead, too damn hot in the suit that he’s wearing next to May in God’s Acre.

There are no eagles on his grave to match his parents.

Ben was normal.

Just a cop.

Ben was normal, but he was murdered all the same.

No one is safe in this world.

No one is safe and everything is crumbling.

Bucky feels like the only good thing to happen to him in months.

Like a lifeboat in a raging sea, but the sides are still too slick for him to climb, his limbs are still too numb to grab the sides, his lungs are still too full of water for him to  _ breathe. _

Bucky is still only one thing, even as he testifies against the world on Ben's first birthday after his death.

He's still only one thing that can go  _ wrong. _

May's hand finds his shoulder, and it takes everything in him not to flinch.

He doesn't spend a lot of time with May anymore.

He misses her, so, so much, but it's hard for that longing to outweigh the fear of mourning .

The fear of having to tell the truth.

He'd almost told Ben.

He'd been so close.

And then–

Peter had come home with a broken nose, and Ben had caught him before he could slip into his room.

Before he could give it an hour or two to heal.

And that had been the tipping point.

He'd been getting bolder, been getting  _ dumber,  _ falling back on old habits and bloody bandanas, after being clean for months.

He'd gotten into a fight too close to home.

Ben had caught him.

Ben had caught him, and they'd fought, and he'd stormed out like an idiot,  magma and ice picks running up and down his spine.

And when Peter had come back, Ben was gone.

He'd taken a nap.

And then Ben was shot and dying and Peter shouldn't have been able to reach him before he bled out, but  he made a habit of defying expectations and doing the impossible .

There was nothing anybody could do.

And that was the beginning of the fall, of the first low.

Peter never got to tell him.

Would May hate him if he told her?

Because Peter–

He should've been able to save Ben.

He should've been able to save him.

If Peter had been out there, if he'd been doing his _job,_ if they'd _never_ _fought in the first place,_ Ben _wouldn't be dead_

Ben is dead, and it's all Peter's fault, and May would never, ever forgive him.

She would never forgive him for killing her husband.

Peter had promised he would tell them, her and Ben.

He'd promised a life time ago.

Back when things were different.

When things were easier, simpler.

Back when the wind wasn't tugging through his and May's hair as they stood in God's Acre on June 5th.

He’s never gonna be ready to tell her.

And Peter’s gonna lie to May for the rest of his life and rot from the inside out.

———

There's someone sitting on top of St. Agnes's, legs swinging and palms resting on the roof.

Peter hits the crux of the roof and rolls across it like a balance beam, flipping off of his hands and into his feet.

It's a little more extra than necessary, but with this guy it feels like–

It feels like he has to make  _ sure  _ that he knows Peter is capable, even as his hands start trembling.

"What are you doing in Hell's Kitchen, Deadpool?"

"It's a free city, baby boy." He responds, still swinging his feet and looking out at the buildings and lights. "Just wanted to check up on you, is all."

Peter bristles with the indignation of it and clenches his fists so tight the leather creaks.

"Because I'm a kid?"

"Because you're grieving, and grieving people do stupid things," Deadpool corrects, something like grief and regret and  _ acid  _ twisted in his tone, "chasing catharsis."

It feels like… a weirdly raw moment.

Something painfully real.

Something horribly honest.

Then Deadpool visibly perks up, leans backwards to look at him, and the moment is gone.

"And hey! What kinda guy would I be if I didn't check up on my new partner?"

Peter scowls instinctively.

"No. We're not partners."

Deadpool deflates. "But we did that drug deal bust!"

"Yeah, because you tried to murder me and I'd lost time." Peter reminds him, crossing his arms and trying to calm the beating of his heart. "I don't need a partner."

Deadpool looks at him for a long moment, mask suddenly still and solemn.

Peter  _ still _ doesn't know how he makes the eyes move.

He's listened for mechanics.

There's nothing there.

"See, I think you do," Deadpool says slowly after looking away again, "because without one, kid, you're fallin' to pieces. Trust me. I know what that looks like."

He grinds his jaw and it sends a pang through his head.

"I  _ don't  _ and I'm  _ fine.  _ I don't need you. I have the Defenders–"

"Who are a team." Deadpool interrupts, folding up to sit cross cross on the roof. "They're a team, where you've always been more of a duo gig, and they killed your brother."

Peter freezes.

He doesn't mean to.

_ He doesn't mean to– _

"What?"  Creaks out of his mouth like something rotted and foul and it's like he's never breathed clean air before in his life, like all he has in his body is smog and exhaust and smoke .

Deadpool glances at him, eyes of his mask moving like one of his eyebrows is drawn up high.

"I'm an assassin, boo, I can do the math." He holds out a hand and starts ticking off his fingers. "Defenders had four members the first time they were spotted. They got three now. You came back alone. Everyone knows how protective the Devil was. Iron Fist's been seen helping you. He only popped up in Chinatown and the Kitchen after DD went missin'."

"That doesn't  _ mean anything though–" _

"I think it means a whole lot, honey, considerin' you basically told me Red was dead, and if there's anything I knew about that piece a work it's that he was soft for kids, and for you, and he never woulda left you alone ." Deadpool eyes him seriously though his mask, through both their masks, and nothing about this matches up with the rumors and gossip he heard about the insane mercenary Wade Wilson. "Daredevil didn't work with anyone but you, but he worked with the Defenders, and didn't walk away from it. I know what guilt looks like , and Iron Fist is always crazy protective of you when you're fighting the same fight. If you were with the other Defenders, they'd prob'ly look the same too."

He abruptly looks away again.

"It don't take a genius. It just takes someone with all the facts and like, an Undertale level of Determination, you know?"

Peter feels nauseous.

He feels nauseous and dizzy and lightheaded and–

And  _ angry. _

He feels–

He feels so _damn_ angry because how _dare he,_ and maybe it's just drowning out the terror but he's filling to the brim with that _horrible_ kind of _wrath_ until it's all he can feel, until it's all he can know, until it's the only thing in the world.

"Leave me  _ alone,  _ Deadpool! You don't– you don't have any fucking  _ idea  _ what you're  _ talking about–" _

And the words catch in his throat.

The words catch in his throat and he feels like that smog is choking all of the air out and he's never going to be able to speak again .

So he doesn't speak.

He moves.

He  _ lashes out blindly. _

And then he's falling over the edge.

Because Deadpool blocked him in an instant, and pushed him right off the next.

And he's falling, spinning,  _ moving  _ throwing out his hands to dig his claws into the mortar–

They dig into flesh as Deadpool catches him by the hand.

Peter blinks back the tears because,  _ fuck,  _ he can't cry.

He can't cry, not here, not now, not under his mask and horns.

He can't.

"You know," Deadpool whispers, with that same solemnity . "You're killing yourself with all this guilt and blame and responsibility you've forced on your shoulders."

And he sounds horribly like he knows exactly what he's talking about.

"Baby boy, little martyr, how old are you?"

Peter tries to breathe, tries to move, but he can barely think.

He can barely think past the ice in his lungs and the seriousness of Wade Wilson's voice.

And Peter says, "Fourteen," because he's sure he would know if he lied.

He's sure.

And Wade's shoulders fall.

Peter doesn't.

He's still holding him.

He's still holding him as his blood drips down Peter's arm in rivers .

"You know, when I was fourteen? I was sneaking out of the house to like, chill in snow drifts." Wade tells him almost conversationally. "See what I– nevermind. I was getting hypothermia at fourteen. You're getting bullet wounds.  What are you doing, kiddo ?"

Peter takes a deep breath.

It's great and heaving and gasping, but it's a breath.

It's air.

And he whispers, shaking and wheezing and  _ tired, _ "With great power comes great responsibility."

The eyes of Wade's mask turn down.

"Who told you that?" He asks, but it sounds like he already has an idea.

"My uncle," Peter answers, voice small, head swimming. "He's been– been dead since December."

"Oh  _ honey," _ Wade breathes, loaded with sympathy and  _ sorrow. _

He hates it.

He hates sympathy.

"Hey, no, look at me," Wade whispers. "Look at me. I know you don't got eye holes in that mask,  but you can see me . Look up."

Peter looks.

What else can he do?

And then Wade says,  _ "Can I help you?" _

"… what?"

"Can I help you?" He repeats, grip tightening. " Will you  _ allow me _ to help you? Because, and I hate to be the one to tell you this, you're fallin' fast and hard with nothing to break your fall. "

"I don't want help," Peter croaks.

Wade shakes his head.

"I know you don't. That's not what I'm sayin'. What I'm sayin' is will you let me help you  _ anyway?" _

And that's when Peter realizes just where he is.

Dangling over the edge of a church roof.

Held up by the arm of the guy who pushed him, after he attacked him.

Held up by the guy  _ asking  _ if he can help him, not foisting it upon him.

"Kid? Goin' once, goin' twice?"

He–

He's so tired.

Peter is–

So, so tired.

And he's tired of being tired .

He's exhausted.

He can't remember the last time he ate, and he  _ needs _ to eat with his metabolism.

He can't remember the last time he  _ slept. _

He can't remember a lot of things.

And he's  _ tired. _

He grabs Wade's arm with his other hand, and hangs there for a moment. 

He closes his eyes.

_ "Please help me." _

There's a great sigh above him, and then he's pulled over the edge of the roof.

"There we go," Wade mutters softly.  "He rises. There's poetry in there somewhere, I know it."

His blood is still all the way down Peter's arm.

It's soaked through.

Caked.

The air tastes like copper, and he's so very dizzy.

"I'ma take you to meet some folks, and we're gonna make you a schedule, just you wait." Deadpool says gently. " You been guardin' these gates real well, I swear, but that stiff breeze is lookin for a fight and I don't think you're in any condition to win."

Peter sits down and rests his head on his knees.

"Folks? Why do I gotta… gotta meet folks? M'tired now. Done."

"It's called getting yourself a support network, sweetheart."

"Nooooo."

Wade–

Picked up him.

Just.

Right up.

Into the air.

"We're getting you a support network."

"Ground."

"Support network first."

_ "Ground." _

"I can toss you over the side if you want."

_ "Nooooo." _

"Nap time and meeting folks it is."

Peter weakly hit Wade's arm.

He was drained.

He was done for the night.

"You gotta stay up for a bit longer. You can sleep after you eat."

He scowls.

"Don't wanna eat. Wanna sleep."

Wade was probably frowning. "That makes it worse."

"Everything makes it worse." He grumbles.

Wade paused for a moment, and he swayed his head back and forth for a moment, like he was letting all of his words rattle inside his head.

Like he was listening.

Slowly, hesitantly, Wade says, "It'll get better, hun."

Peter focuses on the tear he tore in Wade's costume instead of his mask, instead of his words, instead of  _ it'll get better, because it has to _ _. _

"Yeah? And how do you know that?"

Wade is silent for another long moment.

"Because you have to believe that it will," he finally decides. "Or you'll never recover at all."

"That's not the saying," Peter's mouth says for him.

Wade makes a confused noise.

"Oh?"

Peter licks his lips and focuses very hard on the weave of the fabric of Wade's suit.

Tries to just.

To just  _ breathe. _

God, when was the last time he said these words?

When was the last time he heard them?

"The saying is… is–  _ it will get better, because it has to." _

"Yeah?" Wade asks quietly, but it doesn't really sound like a question. "Sounds pretty smart."

"Double D used to say it." Slips out from between his teeth. "He said it all the time.

"Red sounds like a fuckin genius. He knew what was up."

"He was hypocrite."

Wade shrugs. "Aren't we all?"

Peter… doesn't know what to say to that.

Wade sets him down on the roof, and he fights back a yawn.

Everything is so  _ spiny. _

Wade nudges his shoulder. "C'mon kid. Let's get some food in you."

"… You had Thai from the place two down from the flower shop?"

"I haven't got a fuckin  _ clue  _ bout this flower shop a yours," Wade says brightly, "but I'm  _ always _ down for Thai."

———

It breaks the next afternoon, so very early in the day.

In bold, bright letters across every screen in what feels like the world.

_ James Buchanan Barnes, cleared of all charges. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I!! Made art!!! For my own verse!!! Wild I know. If you want, you can check it out [ here!! ](https://cassettemoon.tumblr.com/post/612538990027063296/sketches-and-doodles-of-the-acv-peters-costume)


	5. Fear No Evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter takes one last breath in, and the Antichrist breathes out into the balmy air.  
>  _“I’m not scared of you.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't properly beta-ed! I also don't care!!! Have a chapter y'all!! We be livin in a crisis, please wash your hands and be kind

Peter's always had a weird relationship with court cases.

 _Especially_ with the court cases of Foggy Nelson.

Ned knows this.

When Fisk was put away, he cried.

When Frank Castle threw his trial, he looked hopelessly lost.

When Bucky Barnes was cleared, he stared into space like he couldn't believe it was real.

Like he couldn't believe his ghost was free.

His ghost, James Buchanan Barnes, the Winter Soldier.

His ghost.

_His ghost._

Ned didn't really know how else to think about Bucky Barnes, because if he thought too hard, he'd start dwelling on the very real idea that Peter had knowingly helped a war criminal, even one that committed crimes against his will, starting at around age twelve.

If he just thought of him as the ghost of Peter's stories, that made everything easier.

To deal with and to process and to… to _everything._

If he just… didn't think too hard, it was fine.

If he just didn't second guess all of Peter's other friends(?) like Clint and the twice mentioned Kate(Michelle had counted), the series of initial-only contacts he's seen on his phone(like _six),_ or the Danny(sometimes said with resentment) that occasionally popped up in his stories, who he still wasn't entirely sure wasn't just a very precocious dog, it was fine.

Michelle disagreed on the dog front, citing Peter's penchant to know an alarming amount of important people.

Ned had to give her that one, but still wasn't convinced.

Anyway.

Peter had a weird relationship with court cases.

Peter had a weird relationship with Foggy Nelson's court cases.

Peter had a weird relationship with Foggy Nelson's court cases and all their outcomes.

He had some sort of personal involvement in every single one that made the news.

Was always a half step behind the proceedings, always watching the news religiously, always seeming to put everything he had into anticipating the outcome.

Peter knew Frank Castle and Bucky Barnes personally.

Friends with the Winter Soldier and familiar with the Punisher.

Ned doesn’t know what tie Peter has to the Kingpin.

He doesn’t really want to.

Whatever it was, it was probably bad.

It was probably terrible.

It probably had to do with Peter shaking in 6th grade, voice so very hushed saying _I can’t tell you._

It probably had to do with Peter looking lost in 7th grade, voice tense and uncomfortable whispering _I witnessed a murder I couldn’t take to the police._

It probably had to do with Peter sitting on the floor of his dark room in 8th grade, voice shuddering and quietly mumbling _It felt better to lie._

At what point do all the secrets you hold make you feel as though _it was better to lie?_

The point though, is that Peter had a connection to every court case on the news that Foggy Nelson(and Matt Murdock) had ever done.

Ned just didn't know _how it kept happening._

Peter had said the Punisher had helped him, but that was the only one he had.

Ned didn't know how he knew the Winter Soldier.

He didn't know how he knew the Kingpin of New York.

He didn't know.

_He didn't know._

And there wasn't any time for waiting left.

Michelle had shown him her notebooks, had shown him how everything tied back to Matt Murdock, to that very first case when he had represented the Parker's in their unlawful eviction.

_Matt Murdock._

Everything came back to the late Matt Murdock.

Everything came back to the streets of Hell's Kitchen.

Hell's Kitchen.

 _Hell's Kitchen_ and _red bandanas_ and the _bullet wound through Peter's shoulder._

To the spinning kick.

To the bruised knuckles.

To the knotted scars Ned had seen once and only once wrapping around Peter's elbows and ribcage.

To every bit of Peter that _didn't add up._

To the secrets he kept, to the things he didn't say.

To the sleep he never got.

The food he didn't eat.

The breaks he never took.

Peter was always moving, always going, always pushing himself further and further into the ground.

So Ned notices when he just… stops.

When he visits the apartment and Peter is there, curled up on his couch.

When there's containers of food in his room.

When his knuckles aren't torn and scabbed and bloody.

Ned notices.

He always notices Peter.

And he notices when he isn't slowly killing himself with something he won't say.

Ned _notices._

He just doesn't know what happened, or why, or when.

It's like the death of Matt Murdock all over again.

Except… different.

Different because Peter looked lighter, brighter, still weighed down, yeah, but… 

He didn't look like he was _dying_ anymore and doing his best to hide it.

Different because when Michelle and him stopped by the apartment, Peter and May were tentatively baking dessert in the kitchen, instead of Peter avoiding her.

Different because Liz organized a day for them to all get together and Peter actually showed up, Ben's glasses on his nose and a band-aid on his cheek, sleeves clean and clothes ironed.

Different because Peter _smiled._

Smiled with his eyes slanting and his shoulders curling and his hands covering his mouth as he tried to keep it all in.

Laughed at his phone and snorted when his lungs couldn't keep up, held it close to his face and grinned at whatever he heard.

Flash had asked if he was okay.

If he was dying.

If he'd finally snapped.

 _Flash_ had asked.

_Flash._

Cindy had elbowed him hard enough to make him wheeze, and Peter had never answered.

Ned didn't really care what it was that had happened, or why, or when.

He just… 

Wanted to thank whoever had gotten through to him.

Because on the path he'd been going, some dark, horrible, awful part of Ned didn't think Peter would've made it past sixteen.

He would've gotten himself killed doing whatever it was he did.

And Ned was pretty sure that, at the time?

_Peter hadn't cared._

———

Her dad is taking them all on vacation.

She knows that.

He's been planning it for months.

Ages, even.

Ages and ages and _ages._

But Michelle doesn't really want to go, regardless of the fact that it's been on her calendar since spring break.

Not anymore.

Because Peter is… actually taking care of himself.

And she doesn't know _why._

She doesn't know what _changed,_ what _happened,_ and she _needs to_ if she's going to be able to finally break this.

To finally get Peter to let go of everything he's been holding on to for _years._

There's a new player on the chess board, and she doesn't like it.

A new factor she didn't see coming.

An unknown variable she hadn't accounted for.

Because Peter's always been so painfully stubborn.

She never thought someone would get to him before her and Ned could.

It grates at Michelle's nerves.

Because Peter is _their_ friend.

He's _theirs._

It's supposed to be the three of them.

It's supposed to be Michelle and Ned and Peter in their never ending orbit as he always stays two steps ahead of them like a fox in the brush.

Always slightly out of reach of the hounds.

And _they're_ supposed to be the ones to help him.

The ones to finally, eventually catch up, to finally reach the light casting off his proverbial sails, to finally _understand._

And it looks like they were too slow.

Always _too_ _slow._

Ships passing in the night except they can still see the sea foam left in his wake.

Michelle doesn't like it.

It's not a good feeling.

Unpleasant.

Displeasing.

Rotten.

Michelle doesn't like the _feeling_ of the feeling either.

It sits twisted in her gut, a stone made of clay and sand, gritty and light and compact and _wrong._

Michelle doesn't know how she's supposed to go on this vacation when all she can think about is Peter and Ned.

When all she can think about is finally uncovering Peter's lies.

She's _so close._

So, _so_ close.

She can nearly taste it.

She just needs one last push, one last piece, one last truth spilled from Peter's lips.

That's all she needs.

And now she has to go on _vacation._

Michelle doesn't have time for vacation.

She _needs to help Peter._

She _needs to figure out the new variable._

Needs to figure out who or what got Peter to eat, to sleep, to reach out so very carefully to May like he hadn't been playing a game of keep away with himself since the death of Murdock.

To figure out what got him to _smile,_ small and impossible and barely even real.

To figure out what made him _go to an AcaDec meeting,_ albeit just a friendly meet up.

To figure out what _changed the name of the game_ and got Peter to start acting like he had something to live for.

Instead of walking around like every day would be his last.

Instead of lying when he said he was fine, that he'd slept, ate, drank.

Instead of living like he was dying.

Michelle cares about Peter, so fucking much, almost despite herself.

She hadn't wanted to like him, either of them.

Not Peter Parker and Ned Leeds.

But she was here now, almost twenty notebooks and thousands of text messages deep, and she couldn't bring herself to swim to the surface.

Michelle would never say it, but she'd rather drown than give it all up for one breath of air.

Because Peter Parker and Ned Leeds somehow became her world.

 _Figuring out Peter_ and finally understanding what they needed to do to _help him_ somehow became her world.

They're idiots and losers and _nerds,_ but they're _her_ idiots and losers and nerds.

It's the three of them against Midtown.

_It's Michelle and Ned against Peter._

She's only ever wanted to help Peter, at least since 7th grade.

Before that Michelle had treated him like a fun thought experiment, and then he'd up and gotten even more interesting.

It was rude, really.

And between that first time sitting at their lunch table and 7th grade when Peter had dropped off the planet for a Friday afternoon, Michelle had caught feelings.

For this dumbass classmate of hers.

Him and Ned.

They came as a package deal, obviously.

And it was the three of them.

Michelle and Ned and Peter vs. the World.

Except for when Peter stood up and shielded them like he had the last day of school, scowling with all his teeth and knuckles already stained red.

Except for when Peter was terrified for them, scared for them, so damn anxious when they left his house it was a miracle he hadn't combusted.

That one wasn't entirely unfounded though.

May did the same thing.

Like she's a little scared they'd go through that door, just like Ben, and never come back.

Michelle leaving, even just for a month, was probably going to send Peter into an anxiety ridden overdrive at some point.

He'd just have to deal with it, probably.

No conspiracy for Michelle.

And no Michelle for Peter.

Ned better hold him together while she was gone.

A part of her was terrified that when she got back, Peter would be even worse than before.

A part of her was terrified that this was just some manic high.

A part of her was terrified she'd come back to a corpse in New York City trash.

She wondered if this was how Peter lived.

If this was how he felt all the time.

_Jesus._

No goddamn wonder he was so paranoid.

No goddamn wonder he was so _afraid._

How did he never let them out of his sight?

———

"Did you get my present?"

Watanabe doesn't jump, he'll give her that.

She goes through a full body twitch instead, like a bristling cat in a Ghibli movie.

It's kind of funny, and Peter grins with one side of his mouth.

Just one.

Watanabe sees it anyway and mugs at him as she puts out her cigarette.

"Present?"

"A guy should've been dropped off here like a week or two ago. Yes, no? Ringin' any bells? I was busy, and didn' have time to check in."

Watanabe gives him a blank look for a good hot second, but then understanding dawns on her face like a sunrise.

"The maggia enforcer–" she frowns even harder and jabs a finger at him. "From last Tuesday, dropped on the steps with the note."

Peter smiles wider and does his best to look like he's preening.

"Courtesy of one Luke Cage and Jessica Jones." He says grandly, tossing out a hand as he mock bows. "With directions from yours truly."

Watanabe eyes him, something shifting strangely in her expression.

He's never seen her face do that before.

Then she says, "I thought you didn't work with anyone else," and it shifts into place like a knife between his ribs.

Peter does his best to keep his grin from becoming a grimace.

"Jessica made 'er own choices." He answers brusquely. "She's an adult. She can do that."

Watanabe raises an eyebrow.

"So the rumor of you being spotted with Deadpool in Hell's Kitchen–"

"We don't _work together,"_ Peter stresses with knife hands, "he was jus' hired to kill me and then found out I was, in his words, _a baby,_ so he's makin sure we're seen together so that people know I'm off limits."

Watanabe stares blankly for a moment and then drags a hand down her face, palm coming to rest horizontal over her mouth as she looks away.

"Of course," she mutters sarcastically. "That makes _so_ much sense. It should've been my first conclusion. _Obviously."_

Peter bares his teeth at her and mocks, _"Obviously."_

"I like you better when you're wearing the red and blue."

"Most people do." He chirps breezily. "I us'lly don't break their bones then. But most people also don't know we're the same so _don't say it so fuckin loud."_

She stares at him in disbelief. "We are _alone_ on a _rooftop."_

"Other people come up here!" Peter defends. "I know more 'an one other person that has enhanced hearing! There're _so many folks that travel by rooftop Watanabe–"_

"Jesus, I get it, I get it."

"Do you though? Do you really?" He asks skeptically.

"Are you gen z?" Watanabe responds instead of answering. "Is that what this is?"

"Imma demon from Hell's Kitchen."

"Sure you are."

"I can throw _trucks._ I _have thrown multiple trucks before._ And 'm like, five four right now, _max._ That's not something a normal person can do, _'specially_ a short normal person."

Something in Watanabe's face shifts again, some micro expression he can barely catch.

Her voice is solemn when she says, "We live in an age of not-normal people, demon kid."

The words are dense and laden.

Heavy with the weight of something he almost knows.

Peter does his best to scrunch up his face incredulously.

The mask makes it hard for people to determine his expressions.

"Yeah and? We been knew."

"God, please tell me, are you or are you not gen z?"

He cracks a smile, but it's a little harder to do than it normally is.

This doesn't feel like a conversation the Antichrist should be having.

This is a Spider-man conversation.

This is a friendly neighborhood vigilante conversation.

It's not for the fire and brimstone of Hell's Kitchen, not for the accent that weighs down his words, not for the blood staining his claws from when he'd slashed instead of kicked.

He doesn't know why he says it.

But his mouth moves in it's own, and he hears himself say, almost conversationally, "You know, all'a my other cops 're scared of me. At least a little."

Watanabe tilts her head at him, considering.

"You've got a reputation." She says slowly.

He nods absentmindedly and leans back.

"I do. S'why aren't _you_ scared a me?"

She doesn't say anything for a while, and he closes his eyes.

The city pulses around him.

Stop lights and billboards, street food and spray paint, phone calls and messenger apps.

The whole world is alive.

The whole world is on fire.

Sometimes, when he really concentrates, he can almost see that burning outline Matt always described.

It takes a long time.

But there are days when he can grasp it.

They were working on it before he–

Died.

Before he died.

Mapping out spaces without seeing.

Envisioning the world without eyes.

It was a good challenge.

Contact made it easier, searching through a structure, but just letting the noise bounce and play and shape the world, that was harder.

The space was wider.

It was still… nice.

Almost comforting as the world was painted in air and pressure and sound and heat.

"I knew Spider-man first," Watanabe finally says to the breathing city. "And he never gave me a reason to be afraid."

Peter doesn't respond.

He just breathes.

There's a sound as Watanabe bangs her cigarette packet against her palm.

"That shit's bad for your lungs." Peter says dully. "And that's like, your second within the last thirty minutes."

"Oh I know," Watanabe responds loftily. "I'm waiting for it to kill me."

He opens his eyes and risks a glance.

She's not paying any attention, digging around for a lighter in her jacket pockets.

"If you die, I won't have a cop in Chinatown." He says instead of _Are those your collapsing buildings?_

_Are those your destressors?_

_Are those your adrenaline high?_

Watanabe snorts.

"I'm sure you'll make do," she says dryly, and lights her cigarette.

The air around them is weird.

He wonders if her hands are shaking.

He can taste the smoke in the air after she takes a drag.

He doesn't like it, but Watanabe can do what she wants.

Whatever she needs to in order to cope.

He's met a lot of vets now, and they've all dealt with it differently.

He wonders what Ben did.

"We made a deal." Watanabe says suddenly.

Peter hums.

"That we did."

"You tell me what you find, and I tell you what I find." She recites.

He cocks his head to the side, which is a weird thing to do when you're leaning backwards.

Your spine and shoulders get all scrunched up.

_Not his best move._

"Those were the terms and conditions, yes."

Watanabe takes another drag of her cigarette.

"We've been getting a recent uptick in crimes that don't make sense."

That makes him sit up straight.

Because MetroGen was a _crime that didn't make sense._

"How so?" The Antichrist asks tensely.

"They're happening all over the island, and across the bridges, but the only thing that really connects them are the burn patterns." Watanabe explains slowly. "There's virtually nothing left each time. Except for the most recent one. And that's part of why it's so weird."

He digs his fingers into the concrete, and he doesn't need his claws to carve out dents.

"What'd you find?"

"It was a bank robbery in Brooklyn, and Forensics picked up an energy reading on one of the broken vault doors." She continues.

He purses his lips and pulls his fingers out of the new grooves in the roof.

"You're killing me with the suspense here, chief."

Watanabe hesitates.

Takes another drag.

The air feels almost charged, heavy.

And then she says, "They matched up with the energy readings from the Battle of New York. With the weapons that were left behind by the Chitauri."

———

After Siberia, after Mr. Stark offered him a paid internship, Peter started paying the rent and bills for Bucky's apartment.

He didn't go there often, but it was nice to have a bolt hole in Brooklyn just in case, and he didn't mind putting the money there, considering he barely used the utilities, so the bills weren't too high.

He treated it a lot like Matt's apartment, except not as frequented and Danny wasn't paying for it out of some weird misplaced guilt.

A place to lie low and treat his wounds before getting back out there.

That went on for about two months before Mr. Stark found out where he was putting his money, scrunched up his face at him, and paid for the next four.

And then reimbursed him for the first two months he'd been paying.

Because apparently rich people can just throw their money at you without blinking.

Peter couldn't find it in him to care.

If it was his and May's, maybe, but this was Bucky's.

Mr. Stark paying for it felt like some weird form of, maybe not _forgiveness,_ but possible acceptance.

Or something.

Growth.

Processing.

_Whatever._

But the point was, JB's apartment had been paid for while he was gone.

His stuff kept clean.

His perishables eaten.

His things dusted.

Peter had kept up with it.

But now Bucky was moving out.

To go stay with Captain Rogers and the Falcon.

Captain Rogers he understood, but JB and the Falcon looked like they wanted to murder each other every time Captain Rogers so much as glanced away.

It was entertaining at least.

Maybe the Falcon was getting added to the equation but he was the most rational?

And also a licensed therapist?

That–

Hmm.

_Hmmmm._

That seemed like a pretty big contributing factor actually, now that he thought about it.

"Stop that."

Peter looks up from his box.

The textbook he gave to Bucky is sitting proudly on top.

He gave him two, actually.

He just can't remember if this is the one that had a bullet stuck 300 pages in or not.

"Stop what?"

JB squints at him, hair falling into his eyes.

"You're thinkin' too much."

"Am not." He protests.

JB squints harder and makes a circle with his hand, gesturing to his _everything._ "You make a face."

"I do _not."_

"You do."

"I _don't."_

"Sure." Bucky drawls. "Totally believe you."

"This is bullying." Peter hisses.

"Of course."

 _"Bullying."_ He insists, but he's… he's still smiling.

Not a lot, but it's.

It's something.

_He's missed this._

"Are you bullyin' a child, Barnes?"

Bucky doesn't even turn as he flips the Falcon off.

Just tosses his hand back and closes his eyes primly.

The Falcon makes an offended noise.

_"Ouch."_

Then Captain Rogers walks in, and there's a thump as he puts down his box and sighs.

It's a very tired sigh.

Not as tired as Germany, but still… tired.

Maybe a different kind of tired, too.

Germany had been exhausted.

This one feels more fond.

"No fighting." He says dully, but really, it sounds like an old protest.

Bucky finally turns, but it's just to scrunch up his face and make an _eh_ noise.

"No promises, doll."

Captain Rogers makes a face.

"Please?"

Bucky grins with all his teeth, but it's really more of a smirk than anything remotely resembling _nice._

"Since you asked _so_ politely, I'll think about it." Bucky hums.

Captain Rogers stares him dead in the face for almost a full fifteen seconds.

Then he turns to Peter, completely serious, and whispers, "I'm so sorry you had to deal with this for three years."

_"Oi."_

Peter shoves his box into Bucky's arms hard enough for him to stumble.

Which, really, isn't that hard for him to do, but the Falcon and Captain Rogers' eyebrows go _up_ all the same.

"Honestly the real challenge was sittin' in history, seein' his face on the board, and tryin' to be serious." He explains, tossing another box at Bucky. " _'He's a war hero'_ my teacher says to the class. _'He got mad about the Star Wars prequels last week'_ I think to myself."

Bucky scowls and blows a bit of hair out of his face. "They're dumb!"

Peter gestures a hand towards him, box tower and all.

 _"See?_ Honestly it's a miracle that Foggy's scrutiny was the only one that I crumbled under." Peter complains lightly, and then something cold squeezes around his heart. "I mean… Matt helped. A horrible tag team, really…"

Bucky suddenly looks sad now.

Because Captain Rogers and the Falcon have no idea who Matt is, no idea why he trails off, no idea why he starts to go _cold,_ but Bucky does.

Bucky knows who Matt is.

And then the Falcon, breaking the spiral, incredulously says, _"Foggy?_ Like, _'he says I have a sense of justice problem'_ Foggy?"

Peter blinks, and tries to reorient himself past the growing winter in his chest, coiling tighter and tighter than his binder ever could.

"Oh." He says, voice kind of small. "You _do_ remember me."

The Falcon points at him. 

"You caught my ma's dog. And you were there with Barnes' lawyer at the runway."

"That's Foggy. He's the lawyer," Peter quickly adds. "I asked him to take JB's case."

"You– _asked him?"_ The Falcon squints.

Peter shrugs.

"Sure. I've known him since I was like, eleven." 

He doesn't know what does it.

What gives him away.

Maybe his voice wavers.

Maybe his eyes water.

Maybe his knuckles go white.

But _something_ makes Bucky pause and whisper, "маленький паук?"

Peter waves him off.

"I'm fine." He mutters, but it's more hoarse than he wants it to be.

Bucky frowns.

Glances between the four of them, and seems to come to a decision.

"Steve, come help me with these boxes." He says and starts to walk out the door. "You got a dumb Tetris thing goin' on."

Captain Rogers frowns but starts to follow him anyway.

"It's not _dumb."_

"It's dumb, darlin'."

JB throws Peter one last look, and glances between him and the Falcon.

He mouths the word _talk,_ and then he's gone.

Peter can hear him and Captain Rogers as they bicker down the stairway.

He turns to the Falcon almost mechanically.

"JB wants me to talk to you because you're a therapist."

But the Falcon… doesn't seem to hear him.

He's just… staring longingly, sort of, out the door.

It's.

It's a familiar expression.

One he hasn't seen in months.

It clicks into place.

Oh.

_Oh._

Peter tilts his head, softly, and takes a step forward.

"You like them." He whispers.

That seems to snap the Falcon out of whatever it was that he'd been lost in.

He frowns before going blank and looking away.

"I don't."

"You _do."_ Peter insists. "Matt and Foggy used to look at each other like that all the time."

The Falcon seems to latch onto the one part of that sentence he didn't want him to and asks, "Used to?"

"Matt died." Peter says stiffly past the snow curling around his throat. "So they never got to get over themselves. You don't have that."

The Falcon frowns, but dips his head in a sort of shallow acknowledgement after a moment.

"I ain't gonna mess up their thing, kid," he says very lowly, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "I'll get over it."

His heart says _lie._

Matt's had said that too.

Peter takes a deep breath, and lets it out as slowly as he can.

It weighs heavy.

He doesn't know why.

"We lie most effectively to ourselves, Mr. Wilson. The question you gotta ask yourself is…" he takes another deep breath, and suddenly, it doesn't quite feel like this is just about the Falcon and Captain Rogers and Bucky anymore.

_"How long am I willing to pretend to be something I'm not?"_

———

"Are you sure?"

He can hear talking in the background, and the sound of drinks hitting tables, but Wade's voice is loud and clear over the receiver.

"Sure as sunshine, baby boy. Old friend a yours' been seen skulking 'round the Kitchen." There's a pause as he… listens to something, maybe? "You want me to come find you? I can do that. I don't want him sellin' you or some shit."

Peter sighs and does the final fold for his Spider-man suit, stuffing it into his backpack and putting it under Matt's low table.

Danny's still out.

He thinks he might be Harlem, but he could honestly be in Hong Kong or something and Peter wouldn't know.

"I'll let you know if I need back up. If I don't call back in by like–" he pauses as he pulls on his gloves, checking that the claws are retracting smoothly. "By like, I dunno, one? It's midnight now, right? If I don't check in an hour from now, go nuts."

Wade huffs, probably because he doesn't like that decision, but doesn't protest. "Yeah alright."

Wade's good about that.

He lets Peter be a little bit stupid before reigning him in.

Makes sure he eats and naps and that his leads get followed, but still gives him space.

It's almost like working with Daredevil again.

Almost.

_Almost._

"I'll be alright. Scouts honor." Peter swears breezily.

Wade scoffs, and the sound bounces a little so he might've done it into a glass or a counter. "You ain't no scout. One hour, you hear me? _One._ You get caught and I'm gonna like. Bench you or some shit. Somethin' responsible. Got it?"

"Got it."

"See ya in an hour, boo."

"Bye, Wade."

The line goes dead.

Peter takes a deep breath, puts his phone in a secure pocket that will _not_ open unless he does it himself(many tests were run), and pats down his pouches to make sure he has everything else.

Burner, check.

Bandaids for civilians, check.

Experimental smoke bombs, check.

 _One day,_ he'll get to use them.

_One day._

Experimental venom coated knives, check.

Less excited about those bad boys.

His body makes a _neurotoxin._

A _neurotoxin!_

It's insane.

And finally– trackers that _aren't_ experimental, _super_ check.

Very handy for when he had a concussion and can't do it the old fashioned way.

Peter cracks his knuckles, rolls his shoulders, and stretches his back as far as it'll go.

His spine pops a bit.

And then he slips on his helm, flips the hood, and starts up the roof access.

He has a mercenary to find.

His burns sting with the thought of it.

 _Sure, Peter, seek out the guy that haunted your nightmares for at_ least _two weeks in a row because you were thirteen years old and about to be_ sold _to somebody._

Brilliant idea.

Top fuckin notch.

Midtown is _lucky_ to have you.

He still remembers the sound of the bolos, electric and pulsing and burning through his Kevlar and then his skin.

He remembers the sound and the smell and the taste, and he starts there.

Jumps from rooftop to rooftop until he hits the warehouses and waterfront and _listens_ and _tastes_ and _smells._

Listens for crackle and the burn, tastes for the way it ionized the air like lightning, smells for the way the current had made everything feel like static and storm front.

It's easy to find.

It's easy to find and that probably makes it worse.

It's easy to find and that makes it worse because it isn't moving.

It isn't moving.

_He's waiting for him._

Peter has never liked the waterfront.

It reminds him too much of being eleven years old and in the shadow of the Brooklyn bridge, hearing the sound of someone's skull getting crushed.

And the smell of fish was also _everywhere._

He didn't mind fish.

He didn't.

But he didn't like how the smell got into _everything._

He wonders if the guy knows that, or if he picked it because all the dock workers were home and there would be no witnesses to what was probably going to be a messy fight.

It was honestly probably the latter, but you know.

He doesn't know this guy's life.

He doesn't know anything about him except that he was a mercenary, he had a photo-reflexive memory, and because he'd started hunting Devils, Peter and Matt ended up having to go to ground and he hadn't been able to save Ben.

It's been two years, but when Peter hits the warehouse rooftop, he doesn't think the guy has changed at all.

Taskmaster still looks the same as he did when he snuck up on Peter in Hell's Kitchen almost two summers ago and kick started what would eventually lead to one of the biggest griefs of his life.

Maybe his mask is more scuffed, his hood more tattered.

But Peter doesn't think he really looks any different.

Like he didn't age at all.

"So," he starts with a voice that's definitely stronger than he feels. "What brings you to the edge of the Kitchen? It can't be me. That shit was put out two years ago. And Deadpool's already put me on his list. S'no–go, dude. Guaranteed vengeance."

Taskmaster doesn't say anything.

Just tilts his head like a creepy murder owl.

Didn't he– didn't he say something about not remembering stuff?

"Did your brain get scrambled?" He asked with a tilt of _his_ head. "D'you remember the last time we saw each other? You tried to trade me, you horrifically scarred me, my brother knocked you out–"

"Look at you," Taskmaster interrupts, voice rumbling deep in his throat, just as low and horrible as he remembers. "Walking so very tall in this Valley of Kings."

Peter clenches his fists, tight enough that he's sure his knuckles are white, and hopes it starts the shudder.

"I don' really walk tall, though, now do I?" He asks quietly. "I stick t' the shadows, and I fight dirty and mean. I break people's bones. I'm _cruel._ I'm the Prince of Hell's Kitchen. What about that is me _walkin' tall?"_

"You're not hiding anymore," Taskmaster responds smoothly. "You're attacking the maggia. You've stopped holding back as much. You've caused enough trouble to get your contract renewed."

Peter clenches his jaw next.

His hands are shaking and his pale knuckles can't hide it.

"The Hand is gone. The Kitchen needs a Devil."

"It got along fine without you and the other one for years," Taskmaster drawls, and the air burns where he pulls out his _stupid_ electrified sword.

It paints the rooftop in orange and saffron and electric memories that taste like blood.

"I'm sure it'll be fine once you've been brought in."

Peter pulls out his knives.

Billy clubs won't cut it.

Not this time.

"I'm not letting you take me," he snarls with all his teeth, with the air in his lungs and the bones in his mouth, and it's only been two years but there's still so much _hurt_ in his chest that he can barely breathe.

He won't let Taskmaster take him.

He can't do that to May.

He can't do that to Foggy.

He can't do that to JB.

He can't do that to _himself._

Peter isn't going to get caught.

Not this time.

_Not this time._

Taskmaster clicks his tongue, and when he tosses out his other arm, a shield expands on it like some Greco-Roman nonsense.

It's very Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters.

“You don’t know what you’re dealing with, kid.”

Peter settles into a stance, and he doesn't know when his hands stopped shaking, but his knives are steady in his backhanded grip.

“I think I really do, actually, and the thing is…" Peter takes one last breath in, and the Antichrist breathes out into the balmy air.

_“I’m not scared of you.”_

———

May Parker is many things.

An idiot is not one of them.

She notices, for example, when her kid starts acting strange.

She notices when he disappears for hours.

She notices when he gets _angry._

It's her job too.

May isn't stupid.

She's not an idiot.

She notices.

Ben had noticed to.

They'd seen the bags under Peter's eyes, seen the weight balanced on his shoulders, seen the terror following the line of his back whenever they tried to talk to him about it all.

Even just a _little._

May knew Peter was hiding things in the house too, from the way his trash was pushed down and compacted and how his arms would sometimes go all the way to the back of the cabinet in the bathroom.

She didn't look.

Peter was hiding things, and some part of her was sure that looking would make it worse.

And he snuck out.

He snuck out and he got _hurt._

She was pretty sure he used the concealer to hide the freshest of it, the bruises and imprints, but it was hard not to notice things like the scarred line across his side when he stretched far enough to grab things from the top cabinets and his sweater rode.

It was hard not to notice that it was old.

It was hard not to notice that he was burned and cut and bruised.

And it was hard not to notice all the little things.

The way his knuckles were torn and scarred.

The way he always covered his arms down to his hands.

The way his clothes sometimes disappeared, never to be seen again.

And that was just.

That was _before_ Ben died.

After Ben… after Ben, it's like he got _worse._

She hadn't thought that could happen.

He'd been getting better before that.

No black eyes.

No bloody knuckles.

No sneaking out.

But it did.

It got worse.

Because now when he had nightmares, they ended in cut off screams.

May didn't think Peter could get worse after that either.

She didn't think there could be anything worse than Peter post-Ben.

Because he'd started getting better _again._

Started smiling.

Started relaxing.

Started _breathing._

He'd gotten a Stark Internship.

He'd been doing his homework before he left to do whatever it was.

He'd begun to sleep through the entire night on the days he didn't go out.

And then… 

And then Matt Murdock died.

And there was no funeral.

And Peter didn't talk about it.

He stopped sleeping.

He stopped eating.

He just… stopped.

And then he just… started not coming home at night.

He just didn't come back until morning, looking worse and worse and _worse,_ and she _still_ doesn't know what it was that he'd hit hard enough to break his fingers.

She doesn't know.

Maybe he thought she wouldn't notice, but that's also when Peter starts to avoid her.

Like they aren't the only family they have left.

He'd started drawing away after Ben, just a little, but nothing… nothing as bad as _this._

It had started small, with her having to adjust the stones in the kitchen instead of Peter doing it for her, or making sure the plants at Ben's shrine were changed out.

It had started small, as all things do, before blossoming into something great and big and terrible, before twisting into something that would shatter her whole.

Before _ending_ with Peter looking at her like she was already dead.

Like she wasn't even real.

It was kind of terrifying.

That her nephew looked at her and saw a breathing corpse.

A dead man walking.

May didn't know what she was supposed to do.

There wasn't a book.

There wasn't a pamphlet.

She couldn't talk to Claire about it.

She was up in Harlem with a backdoor practice and a target on her head.

She had better things to do.

She couldn't talk to Rio about it, either.

Her Miles was so young, and happy, and loved being around his parents more than anything, even if he did find Jefferson a bit embarrassing.

He was like the polar opposite of the Peter that was living in her nephew's skin.

The Peter that Ned and Michelle had quietly told her had fought someone.

That had spoken Russian.

That had laughed and chattered and hurt, that had taken a knife to his throat.

That had bitten down on someone's arm and _torn._

That had bloody red stain his teeth, his lips.

That had honestly looked more terrified of them and his teammates than he had of the HYDRA agent.

The _HYDRA agent._

That had gone to the MoMA that day for _her baby._

Her baby, that knew so much more than he let on.

It wasn't hard to put it together.

The JB and James Barnes and Foggy Nelson.

It wasn't hard.

Peter talked about James Barnes more than he thought he did, and he'd adored Foggy Nelson since the day they met.

He'd adored Foggy Nelson and Matt Murdock to death.

Her and Ben, they'd been almost worried at first, just for a second.

Only a second.

Because spending time with Foggy Nelson and Matt Murdock and Karen Page had made Peter so _happy._

He'd been so scared back when they'd met, with the Man in the Mask and Fisk and the bombings.

He'd been so scared, and Foggy had been in the hospital, and Matt was nowhere to be found, and he'd been so scared.

May could see it, though.

That beneath all of that terror he had been furious.

That was the start of it, she thinks.

Really looking back, that's when the anger started to bloom.

When Peter started to spend time in Hell's Kitchen.

When Wilson Fisk was put away.

When he met Matt Murdock.

But they'd still made him _happy._

He'd told them, her and Ben, that whatever it was, he loved doing it.

That had felt like enough, then.

But it didn't quite feel that way anymore.

She wasn't like Michelle and Ned, but she knew there was a picture she wasn't seeing.

A picture painted in funerals and suit jackets, in bloody knuckles and mysterious internships, in wooden rosaries and bracelets made of stone.

In a baseball cap that said Marine Corp.

In cracked and dusty red glasses.

In burns that coiled Peter's body.

_In names he shouldn't know._

There was a picture painted in a thousand things, a tapestry woven from a million threads.

She could almost see it.

Peter had promised so very long ago that he would tell them.

Her and Ben.

She thinks that maybe he's too afraid to now.

Too scared.

If she puts it together herself though, maybe he won't have to.

Maybe she'll finally put it together and take the weight of the world off his shoulders.

Maybe she'll finally be able to help the last piece of her family left.

It's what Ben would want.

For her to help their baby, no matter what.

May loved him so much, and she loves Peter even more.

She's going to do it.

Not even if it kills her, because that would break Peter's heart, but as close as she can get.

She'll do it.

She will.

It's just a matter of time.

May Parker is many things.

_An idiot is not one of them._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also Peter isn't dead or anything that's just where I cut off i sWEAR, HE'S F I N E

**Author's Note:**

> Please please pleASE come chat w me on [ tumblr](https://cassettemoon.tumblr.com) if you have questions about the story or just wanna tell about cool things bc you guys are a riot and I love chatting with y'all!  
> (Don't judge my y'all it's a valid word okay)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Till All My Scars Bleed Golden](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23148067) by [Soaring_through_the_stars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soaring_through_the_stars/pseuds/Soaring_through_the_stars)




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